


Of Fictions and Travels

by DiazTuna



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Enchanted Forest, F/F, Swan Queen - Freeform, The Enchanted Forest, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-04-01 11:33:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13997412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiazTuna/pseuds/DiazTuna
Summary: “Good always wins, sweetheart.” Her mother fixes her quilt again and kisses her forehead. “Always remember that.”Emma dreams of wild horses and crowns, of a beautiful Queen alone in her throne. In her sleep she sees a girl whose mother had tucked her in too tight over her chest.An Enchanted Forest AU in which the Evil Queen was defeated and Princess Emma grows up hearing stories about her. With time, she goes searching for the Queen in the past.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't quite the Wishverse but it does take elements from it because it's built around a similar premise. Also this may work as a weird-not-really-a-prequel-just-Gay-Princess-Emma to Mari's newest? It's just happens when Princess Emma is involved. Big shout out to Mari and a Step for validating me for weeks!
> 
>  
> 
> (I promise I'm not behind in writing)

“Once,” Her mother begins with a whisper. “There was a princess..”

 

“Was the princess you?” Emma asks not liking how her mother tucks the quilt under her arms.

 

“Yes,” Her mother laughs but she thinks perhaps she shouldn’t have asked. “And one afternoon while riding through our southern territories my horse went wild.”

 

“What did you do?” Emma looks at her mother and wonders what it means when she smiles so tightly.

 

“A woman came to my rescue,” She clears her throat and brushes the hair off her face. “Her father owned the land and to reward her for her good deed…”

 

Her mother catches her reflection in the mirror that hangs from the wall. She must see something there that makes her turn with a different look in her eye.

 

“Yeah?” Emma presses her.

 

“My father married her and made her Queen,” Her mother is Queen, Emma knows that. It’s how it is that she is a princess but she hadn’t known there had been a Queen before her.

 

“What was she like, mom?” She sits up and the quilt falls her to lap.

 

“She was…” Her mother is hardly without words, she can even spare them for birds and deer. “Fearsome. Cruel.”

 

Emma is pushed back onto her mattress and feels uneasy despite the softness of it. Her mother continues her story, she tells her of how the Queen grew darker with each passing year. But before anyone could see her for who she truly was she had taken all the power for herself. It wasn’t until her mother faced her that she was defeated.  All Emma can do is try to picture her, dark eyes under a scowl. Emma knows what it’s like to feel angry, she’s six years old now.

 

“Good always wins, sweetheart.” Her mother fixes her quilt again and kisses her forehead. “Always remember that.”

 

Emma dreams of wild horses and crowns, of a beautiful Queen alone in her throne. In her sleep she sees a girl whose mother had tucked her in too tight over her chest.

 

* * *

 

It’s a warm Summer night, the air smells of the strawberries that make up every dessert. Her mother’s favorite.  The torches lighting every bit of the garden make the night look orange and Emma’s hair sticks to the back of her neck. She’s running all through the royal maze, determined to beat her friend.

 

“Found it yet, Princess Emma?” Mulan asks from nowhere her eyes can see.

 

“Don’t call me that!” Emma shouts and wonders if the halt in the music outside has anything to do with her.

 

The tune changes and suddenly she remembers that the whole reason of this yearly celebration is about to begin. The reenactment of her mother’s victory over the Queen. It’s the first time Emma is allowed to be in the audience or rather, the first time she is required to be there. It’s only logical and necessary that she cuts through the hedges, twigs tearing the fabric of her dress as she goes along. She doesn’t stop until she crashes into Mulan.

 

“This was a bad idea.” Mulan groans as she pushes Emma off  her. “And you cheated.”

 

“I’m late!” She says tripping over her skirts as she gets to her feet. “And I’m definitely stealing some pants next time.”

 

“Your Royal Highness! God give me strength!” Emma freezes at the sound of Granny’s voice. “Just how am I supposed to explain to Her Majesty that her daughter looks like a street urchin?!”

 

“I..um..I” She thinks of her mother’s soft sighs as she sets eyes on her. “Sorry?”

 

“We’d only meant to play a short game.” Mulan says standing straight as an arrow.

 

“I expected better from you, Hua.”

 

“It was my idea!” Emma exclaims indignant.

 

“And if she still aspires to be part of the royal guard she needs to learn how to _curve_ a Princess’s wishes.” Granny scolds her before Emma can get a word in. “Come on, you two.”

 

Granny delivers Emma to her handmaidens who do their very best to try and fix everything that is wrong with her as they walk. They’re careful with her hands and their steps, somehow shielding her from all eyes that might discover that Princess Emma looks like something less than porcelain. Her mother sighs just like she knew she would as she sits but it’s her smile that has her stomach in knots.

 

“Right on time,” Her father squeezes her shoulder. “A minute more and it would have been the royal guards after you.”

 

The drums begin like thunder and it makes her jump in her seat. It isn’t the first time Emma has heard this story, her mother had first told her to her some four years ago. The stage is dark and there is deep and loud cackle coming just off it.

 

“And so it is, Princess Snow White will take a bite from my poisoned apple and fall into a sleep like death!” Says an old woman dressed in black. The hair that escapes her hood is white and her skin has been painted to look darker. “Then the Crown is mine, and only mine!” Her words are laced with a sound she can’t recognize, something not from this land.

 

She passes in between the lords and ladies with a limp, glares at the other children and Emma cannot believe it. This Queen looks nothing like the dark eyes she’d first imagined when she’d closed her eyes that night. She is embarrassed to find herself scared in her presence, too old to be frightened by something that is not real. But Emma can’t look away, not even when it’s all wrong. There are no portraits of the Queen to prove her right. Just her knotted stomach and silly dreams.

 

There is a girl that is supposed to be her mother up on stage. She shudders to see someone look so much like her, fair and delicate even in the way she stands. It was perhaps this girl who should have been Princess, she thinks for a moment without bitterness. The old woman approaches her, slowly. The girl is too busy humming a song and gathering wood to notice her. It’s a gasp that escapes her when she lays eyes on the Queen. Her mother has never been one for gasping, Emma knows that. But maybe she had been, when she’d looked like that girl.

 

“All alone, my dear?” She asks.

 

“Why, yes.” The girl’s voice sounds nothing like her own.

 

“A girl so hard at work like yourself must be hungry,” The Queen reaches for what Emma knows to be a poisoned apple. “Here, before you faint.”

 

The girl is trusting, like her mother says she was, and reaches for it before birds and forest dwellers attack the old woman until the apple falls from her grasp and the girl sees her for who she really is. Smoke comes quickly after and then a ray of light, coming from the girl herself. Fairy magic, is what had helped her mother defeat the Queen. The light advances until it’s so blinding Emma that she has to look away. The Queen lies on the ground, unconscious. The sleeping curse she had meant for the girl had taken a hold of her.

 

“And this is how Princess Snow White defeated the Evil Queen on this day and our Kingdom and people were free from her rule!” A man announces just below the stage and the crowd cheers.

 

Evil. Emma had never thought of the word before. It sits in her belly through the night, through the cream and sugar, through the flutes and jokes of the jester. The Evil Queen, cursed to sleep forever.

 

* * *

 

Emma likes her boots, stolen from armory. A royal spy’s maybe because they are light on the white marble of the palace. It hadn’t been all she’d taken from the armory, if a lord were to run into her now he’d take her for a page not a princess. _Good_ , she smiles at the thought. She had given her mother the three hours she had promised her at the annual celebration, Emma had even danced with the boy she had picked. Three hours, not a minute longer.

 

“Oh sweetheart, won’t you stay? Her mother had cupped her chin and Emma had felt the burn of her gaze. “You look so beautiful tonight.” It had shaken her resolve for a moment, the pride in her voice. “Like the Princess you are.”

 

“I’m sorry, mom.” Emma had meant it more than she cares to admit.

 

It’s the quiet she had craved among the violins and claps. Every stitch that held her clothes together had dug into her skin that she thinks this cotton shift the finest thing in the kingdom. She had been looking forward to this night, where every member of the court is in the ballroom and every handmaiden is too tired to follow her around. This palace had once been her grandfather’s summer residence, the castle used by the Queen was deemed too dangerous a shadow of her reign. Her mother made the palace larger,  made to look as if every yellow and white flower blooming had just sprouted there, never planted. Emma has memorized the maze, knows which fountain is the deepest and just which pond holds the biggest fish. But it’s the palace’s second library that she wants tonight. If her nannies and handmaidens had not worked so hard to steer her away from it she would not be here now.

 

“No one would think to look for me here anyway.” Emma mutters to herself as she pushes the door open.

 

“Who goes there?” A voice asks a corner of the room.

 

“It’s…” She hesitates. “Someone who wants to see the library. Is that alright?”

 

“I suppose it is.” He emerges with a cup steaming with a smell her nose can’t place. “But no one has ever..what is the word?” There is something familiar about the way he speaks, it feels like a distant memory.

 

“Bothered?” Emma shrugs her shoulders.

 

He smiles as he nods. He is maybe half a head taller than she is and he has barely any hair left. The brown of his skin contrasts with the blue of his jacket. Emma is certain she has never seen him before, she would have remembered the defeated kindness in his eyes.

 

“What is it that you are searching for?” He asks.

 

“I don’t really know.” Emma replies somewhat embarrassed. “Can I just look around?”

 

“Of course.” He sips from his cup and is too content to retire to a desk illuminated by two lamps.

 

She walks between the rows of books and parchment. Browned maps and it all smells like dust, there is nothing about this room that seems special to her. Emma pulls the nearest book from a shelf. The title has been scratched off and her brow furrows. It’s heavy in her hands and something feels amiss. It’s when she discovers that she does not know any of the words in its page that she understands.Her fingers flip through its pages, and there isn’t one sentence she can piece together. Foreign languages have never taken hold like her mother expects but Emma thinks that she would have at least been able to read them. Every book she opens after that is just the same, with no title and its meaning indecipherable. The scrolls are different, written in characters she could never make sense of. Emma takes one of each, determined to carry them up to her chambers. The oddest and most uncharacteristic of her secrets.

 

“Do you need help?” The man doesn’t get up from his desk and the question is meant to tell her to leave what she had taken. “You are not troubling me.”

 

Emma nods and shuffles her feet as she approaches his desk.

 

“Sit, you look as if you have been on your feet long enough.”

 

She accepts the invitation and lays the stolen book and scroll in front of him. “I can't read the language and I can't even guess what any of these books might say.”

 

“Memories from another time,” He looks as if he is measuring his words. “From my people.”

 

“I still don’t…”

 

“Too valuable to be destroyed but not enough to be shared.” His finger runs through the words of the page, squinting his eyes. He mutters soft words and his expression grows somber.”Who will you be tonight in the dark of sleep, at the other side of the wall?”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“It is what it says,” He breathes in as if trying to contain himself. “It is just an old book of poems.”

 

Emma locks her hands together and bites her lip to reign in all her questions. Her eyes fall on the scroll, with the thick black characters. It looks like she shouldn’t have touched it all but her curiosity pulls harder than her guilt.

 

“And I have no clue what this might be.” She breathes out her confession, glad that this man does not recognize her as the Princess.

 

A fond laugh escapes him, almost like his heart aches.

 

“What is it?”

 

“My daughter said the very same thing to me when she first saw something like it. She was around fifteen then too.” He drinks from his cup and his eyes threaten to break. “She wanted me to teach her to read it.”

 

“Did you?” Emma whispers, focusing only on the characters on the scroll.

 

He shakes his head. “My people forgot how long ago. Only some words remain with us.”

 

“Where…”

 

“Where is my daughter or my people?” He lays back in his chair and it’s only then Emma notices the wrinkles around his eyes.

 

“Both, I guess.”

 

“Not here.” He closes the book and hands it to her, the scroll he keeps. “Gone with the Queen.”

 

Emma nods understanding that she has been asking too much of him, even if the mention of the Queen, _the Evil Queen_ a voice reminds her, makes her heart race. She gets up with the book full of poems and with more questions than she had before.

 

“Thank you for this,” Emma pauses and extends her hand like her father does. “I’m sorry I never asked your name.”

 

“Enrique,” He answers with a warmth she hadn’t seen before. “Henry, if that is easier for Your Royal Highness.”

 

She laughs, grateful for more than one thing.

 

When she lies in her bed, with the book safe under her pillow, Emma repeats the words Henry had read for her and dreams of dark eyes and the Queen alone in her throne.

 

* * *

 

Today Emma is grateful for the boots gifted to her in secret, sturdy enough to stop a snake’s bite or so Henry had told her. It’s nearing Autumn, the leaves barely threatening to change color. It’s the perfect time for an excursion, one that had cost her four different promises to her mother. A delicate dress made from lace to be worn, a royal ball, tea with a Prince from a kingdom up North, and the first picking of strawberries to be hers. Nothing but a short trip to the waterfalls, she had lied. Mulan is a royal guard now, she had said, no need for anything bigger than that. And her mother had agreed with a smile, the smile that always make her stomach twist with guilt.

 

“We need to go East,” Emma holds up an old map, eyeing it like a challenge. “Right?”

 

Mulan lowers it and quickly inspects it. “Right. It should be an easy journey, just a mountain to get over.” She pauses for a second. “Where did you get this map anyway?”

 

“From the palace library.” She hastily rolls it up and stashes it in her bag, not missing the look it earns her. “Why?”

 

“No map I’ve ever been given has had the Evil Queen’s castle on it.” Her friend clears her throat.

 

Emma thinks of everything she can’t tell her, things she swore to keep to herself. Conversations with Henry, slowly piecing sentences together with him. Stories about his daughter who loved horses and apples, about the crown the Queen had fashioned after melting the King’s. She cannot tell her of dreams and memorized words she whispers in the night. It’s sounds too much like child’s play and Emma knows she verges on becoming a woman now, just a few months shy of eighteen. No one will let her forget.

 

“It wasn’t always her castle.” She mutters in reply. “Are you about to try and curve my wishes, Hua?”

 

“Not at all, _Princess._ ” Mulan folds her arms behind her back and tries not to smile. “Just wondering why we’re going to a place that is forbidden.”

 

“Aren’t you curious?”

 

“Not as much as you are, clearly.” She walks ahead of her, her sword and bow barely moving with her steps. “But it’s not my place to ask questions.”

 

Emma laughs knowing it’s her way of letting her keep her secrets, knows how much she values the ones she keeps even from her. It isn't until they’re building a fire a top the mountain that Mulan looks like she might question her again.

 

“What do you hope to find there?”

 

A chill invades her, one that has nothing to do with the cold of the night. The gentle sounds of the woods do nothing but expose her silence.

 

“I don't know.” Admitting to anything more would break her promises. “Isn't the kind of thing royalty is supposed to do anyway?”

 

“What kind of thing?” Mulan asks while handing her a flask.

 

“Quests.” Emma’s whole face scrunches with the alcohol and her body grows warm with it.

 

“That's for princes, I think.” She replies and Emma knows she’s caught the lie in her words.

 

Her friend knows too well that what Emma craves is being out in the rain and mud. Chasing after thieves or maybe even after lost sheep. Sore legs after a day that doesn't feel too long.  A fire every night and maybe feeling she's more than the crown her mother keeps under lock and key. More than tea and waltzes.

 

“Don’t tell me _you_ are against me behaving like a prince.” Emma feeds the fire and wraps a blanket around her shoulders.

 

“You know that is not what I meant.” Mulan’s hands quick to tie her hair into a bun as if to prove her point.

 

“Yeah,” Her smile is only big enough to reassure her. “This just seemed like something I should do.”

 

“Alright then.” She squeezes her shoulder. “We should rest.”

 

The trees hide the night sky, there is only a glimmer of light coming in through the leaves and needles. Mulan is quiet, trained to sleep on command. Her questions linger out here in the woods, where there is no one to fuss over Princess Emma. Why is she doing this, really? She searches and searches and only one afternoon at the palace library comes to mind.

 

_“I do not suppose you know what it is like to be different, Your Highness” Henry had asked like a provocation. It could have been a word she had muddled or a every day complaint about lords and ladies that had made him ask. Emma cannot remember it now._

 

_“Maybe not.” She had replied trying to memorize a whole a verse about white roses, to avoid dwelling on an honest answer._

 

_“She knew.” He’d had that look in his eye and Emma hadn't known if it was his daughter or the Queen he’d been thinking of. “She could not hide it even if she tried.”_

 

_Emma had remained quiet and watched him drink his coffee. He’d sunk further into his arm chair. It’d been best to let him trail off, wander off to his memories._

 

_“It was quite a thing to witness,” Henry had looked at her dress and smiled as if he had suddenly understood something. “To watch the Queen make what marked her different  into a...the word has slipped my mind. Armadura?”_

 

_“Armor?” She had offered with a slight smile, grateful for his test._

 

_“Armor. Yes.” Henry had nodded and gone back to his reading._

 

_That night Emma had not been able to sleep, wondering just when she’d be able to wear her differences and not hide them under fine fabrics and promises. Not wear them only when she isn't seen._

 

She cannot sleep tonight either thinking of her. Wondering what her armor must have looked like, what it must have been like to walk inside the castle walls with it. Emma tries to picture her again, it’s become harder with Henry's words. There is so little he says of how she’d looked and so much else he doesn't say. He misses those days, it’s all she knows and he is ashamed to say it. Emma pinches her eyes shut and tells herself it's a small truth she hopes to find in the castle. Something to prove her dreams true, something that will make her stop wondering. Something she will not remember when she becomes a woman.

 

It’s harder to lie to herself in the dark of the woods.

 

* * *

 

It looks like a hill when she first spots it, covered in all sorts of wilderness. Forbidden castles are not made of black after all. This one is barely a castle, had Mulan not pointed out its towers Emma would have walked past it.

 

“Do you think we’re the first ones here?” Emma asks checking a bridge for rot before stepping on it.

 

“Who else would come?” Mulan unsheathes her sword anyhow. “I’m blaming you if one of these vines snatches me.”

 

“I’ll blame me too.” The wood creaks under her and somehow it feels it's warning the rest of the castle.

 

The courtyard is littered with leaves and arrows, their steps echo across it. Mulan holds her tongue when Emma gasps at flapping wings and the crawling of mice. Things grow here, out of the door. If she didn't know better she would say the castle is hiding something. They stop just before the threshold, looking at what seems to be a void.

 

“Stay close to me in there.” Mulan tells her as she prepares a torch.

 

“I can take care of myself.” Emma says lighting her own torch.

 

“You’re still the Princess and I’m still your guard.”

 

Emma looks down at her boots and wishes, wishes that weren't true.

 

“Better get a move on then.” She mumbles and leads the way.

 

The fire doesn't do much to light the way and it smells of dirt, no, like a tomb. The roots want to break through the floor and Emma keeps a hand to the wall as to not lose her footing. They turn a corner and suddenly the stone beats under her fingers.

 

“Did you feel that?” Emma whispers.

 

“Yes.” Mulan replies shortly. “Let's keep walking.”

 

There is a staircase and the vines have covered what she suspects to be a stained glass window. Sunlight isn't supposed to come through. Emma breathes in before she takes the last step and sees her torch multiplied before her eyes. Mirrors, a hall of mirrors.

 

“This doesn't feel right. Emma,” Mulan grabs her elbow. “We should leave.”

 

“We didn't come all this way to turn back now.” Emma says more harshly than she had intended.

 

“You don't even know what you’re looking for.”

 

Emma turns around to face her, ready to say whatever comes to mind when she catches her reflection in the mirror. Or rather someone who looks like her.

 

“Sure I do.” She says walking towards the mirror. Mulan follows her and grows quiet along with her.

 

Emma’s reflection is wide eyed, wearing a red jacket that looks nothing like anything of hers. Her hair is loose and she stands like Emma she wishes she always could. Her hands are in her pockets and she smiles so wide

 

“What do you think this is?” Emma presses her hand to the mirror and watches the other Emma follow suit.

 

“She was a witch, wasn't she?”

 

“Who?” Emma is absent walking down the hall, following her own eyes watching her.

 

“The Evil Queen. This could be a left over spell…” Mulan sounds distant, like the corridor has stretched where she can't reach her.

 

Emma should worry, call after her but her reflection changes. Her smile is different, her hair is braided and her lips are red. Her cloak is white and she's almost shy to be seeing her. This Emma frightens her with the white flowers in her braid and her untainted gloves.

 

“They would love you.” She hears herself whispering.

 

“Love who, dearie?” Someone asks by her shoulder.

 

“Who said that?!” Emma steps away and threatens whoever it was with fire.

 

“Funny thing magic, isn't?”  The voice ignores her in the dark.  

 

“Who are you? Where's Mulan?” The sweat running down her back is cold.

 

“Your little friend is just as taken with this mirror as you are,’ He comes into the light, his eyes yellow and his skin is a leathery green. “How about you begin asking the right questions, Your Highness?”

 

She should run, find Mulan and run back all the way back to the palace. Never speak of this place again, but Emma steps closer to him.

 

“What am I seeing?”

 

“Different lifetimes, Princess” He snickers and in a blink he is standing farther away. “Who you could be if one little thing had wrong or very right. Depends on who you ask.”

 

He’s luring her, she knows that much but she can't help herself.  “As it stands, you're neither here nor there.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Something is not quite right, but you knew that.” They keep a steady pace until they have reached a gallery and every portrait has been torn. “It's why you're here. Looking for her.”

 

“I’m not,” Emma replies with fear brewing at the pit of her stomach. “She's cursed, asleep..”

 

“Forever? And where do you think the fairies put her? Whose heart do you think beats inside these walls?”

 

“She's here?” Her pulse races and her knees weaken at the thought.

 

“You won't find her, the enchantments will make sure of that.” He looks at his nails as if he's grown bored with her.

 

“Oh.”

 

“There is, however,another way.” His teeth are sharp, like a beast’s.

 

“What is it?” She shouldn't be asking questions but she cannot stop. Emma can't even blame magic for it.

 

“Ah, that would require a deal.” His eyes are shining. “You give me something I want, and I give you what you want.”

 

“And how would you know what I want?” Emma stands like one of her reflections had.

 

“It's not difficult to see, not impossible to hear silent wishes.” He blinks away from her away. “Nevermind how I know, what you want is to find her isn't it? It’s what you've always wanted. Living in the shadows like you are.”

 

“But you said the enchantments will keep me from finding her.” She scowls, her head beginning to throb.

 

“And what good would a sleeping Queen do you? You’re some twenty-five too late.” He laughs again, too amused with himself. “For a hair off your head, you can travel back through time and finally get what you're looking for.”

 

Emma feels like she's about to be sick, deals shouldn't be made people such as him. Deals promising impossible things are dangerous and she should scream. She should.

 

“Why a hair?” She grits out instead.

 

“Child of true love, just one of your hairs can do wonders in the right hands.”  He extends his hand, as if to seal it.

 

Emma thinks of dark eyes, of apples, crowns remade and armors. She thinks of Henry’s stories and the books and scrolls she cannot understand. Of memorized verses and torn canvasses. Silly dreams, wishes and just yearning for something she cannot name. Of the rain, mud and late night fires.

 

“Fine.” She shakes his hand and then plucks a hair from her hair.

 

“Be warned, magic will take you where it thinks you should go. It will bring you back when it feels like it and it will only ever work within these walls.”

 

“Wait, what?” Her face grows numb as air leaves her chest. “Mulan..”

 

“Will never even know you were gone.” He grins again and waves his hand. “Have a safe landing, princess.”

 

Emma feels a push and like she's being stretched and twisted. There is nothing but dark and silence, until rocks scrape the palm of her hands. A horse neighs and its hooves stomp next to her.

  
“You _idiot._ ” A girl’s voice is sharp above her.


	2. Chapter 2

 

Morning mist seems to always awaken Regina, just before the Sun begins to rise. It smells like rain and were it earlier in the year she would smiled at the memory of her father saying huele a tierra mojada. But it’s Autumn and she has been Queen since Summer and has not seen her father since her wedding day. All Regina can do is whisper the prayer he’d taught her in a language she had never learned. It’s a promise, she knows that much. One her ancestors had made in another land and one she is meant to keep. Prayers are all she these days, these days that have her sighing as soon as her feet feel the cold stone under them.

 

“Another sunrise.” She says looking at the blue stillness of the morning threatening to become orange. There is never enough time.

 

Regina braids her hair and slips into the only boots and trousers she had managed to bring with her. Perhaps she had been blessed with the uncaring handmaidens who always come in when the Sun is warm, maybe they work around the Princess’s schedule instead of hers. Whatever the reason she always manages to make it to the stables for a morning ride. She had learned to be quick and silent in her steps because of mother’s light sleep, getting past a whole tower of tired women is the easiest part of her day.

 

The chill piercing through the cotton of her shift makes her skin harden almost to the point of pain and Regina can breathe. Still alive, still herself. The mud hitting her boots almost makes her smile. But it’s Rocinante’s low rumble when she walks into his stall that does the trick.

 

“Hey, hey sweet boy.” She pats his nose and he pushes up her hand. It’s like he has learned to temper his happiness for her, as to not rouse anyone. “Sleep well?”

 

He stomps his hooves on the ground, impatient to his very bones.

 

“That bad?” Regina whispers brushing his mane. “It never got this cold at home, I know.”

 

She lays a blanket under his saddle and leads him out as quietly as she can. The thickness of the mud muffles their steps and she dares to feel good about this morning. It’s how she puts her foot in the stirrup and is up in the saddle before she usually is. Rocinante only gallops when she presses his sides where the grass is green and tall. Regina always thinks of never pulling the reins, of just letting him keep going. Through the woods, to get cross them or get lost and never to be found. It doesn’t matter. Regina had tried that before she was the owner of a title she did not want and once again when her shoulders were heavy with a crown. Her mother had appeared before her like smoke.

 

 _“Foolish, selfish girl.”_ She had said but it was the coldness of her smile that had made Regina afraid. Then had come to hot restraint of her magic on her arms and that memory is always enough to slow her march. But this morning had worked a smile from her and Rocinante’s hooves are loud enough to drown those words for a little longer. The terrain becomes harder and Regina has to lift her body off to avoid hurting herself. She breathes in the morning air and closes her eyes if only for a second. Long enough for Rocinante to neigh loudly and almost fling her to the ground.

 

“Shh, shh.” Her grip tightens on his reins and her thighs press against his side to keep herself steady.

 

It’s a patch of blonde hair that catches her eye once Rocinante settles. A girl lying on the ground, in between his hooves. Seemingly having materialized out of thin air and instinctively Regina feels for her mother’s magic. There isn’t a trace of it which means an ordinary girl’s carelessness had done this.

 

“You _idiot.”_ Regina spits out unrestrained. “You could have killed me!” She makes her horse step back, feeling her blood running hot.

 

The girl gets to her feet and tightens her hands into fists. She only looks up at Regina with a strange sort of curiosity, as if she doesn’t know what to make of her words. Regina dismounts and faces her with any of her good mood gone.

 

“Well?” She demands.

 

“Well what?” The girl replies with her cheeks reddening from the morning chill.

 

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Regina crosses her arms and watches the girl’s brow furrow in turn.

 

“Maybe you should look where you’re going next time?” She says in a tone so thoughtless that she would have thought her a lady were it not for the dirt and tear of her clothes. Besides, ladies of this kingdom do not stray so far into the country. Ladies look nothing like her.

 

“ _I_ should look where I’m…?” It’s the way that the girl bites down into her lip and stuffs her hands into her pockets that irks her the most. “And just what is ...whatever it is you are doing out here anyway?!”

 

“Besides tripping and almost killing ladies on horseback, you mean?” The girl’s eyes are green and seem to be lighting up the more she speaks. She stands so close to Regina, closer than anyone has been allowed to be.

 

Regina doesn’t dare budge an inch, not knowing what to make of the warmth spreading at the base of her neck. She wants her gone, she decides. Gone, gone before she can put a name to what courses all over her.  She clears her throat and hardens her gaze in a way that is becoming more and more natural. Regina is about to push her away and get back on her horse when she hears the gallop of castle horses approaching them. The morning is no longer pale in its color and that the rest of the castle has awoken. Royal guards sent for her. They surround them in a way that treats her more like a criminal than the Queen.  The leader dismounts and curtsies like his duty forces him to do.

 

“Your Majesty, your handmaidens did not find at your chambers.” He does not look at her. “And Princess Snow will be inquiring after you at the breakfast table soon.”

 

“Of course,” Why else would they have ridden out if not that she was to be at the Princess’s side? “I lost track of time, forgive me.”

 

“Your Majesty?” The girl whispers with her eyes wide and her hands loosening to reveal bloody scrapes in her palms. “But you’re... _you’re just a girl_.”

 

“Aren’t you a clever one?” Regina says failing to gather any ill will in her words because this girl hadn’t know she is the Queen until this very moment. Her shoulders shrug as she watches her suddenly grow nervous, eyeing the sheathed sword at the guard’s hip.

 

“Is she bothering you, Your Majesty?” He asks.

 

“No,” Regina reluctantly accepting his helping hand up Rocinante. “Just a stable hand too eager on the job. See to it that she get backs all right.”

 

She takes one last look at her, standing dumbstruck and never tearing her eyes off her. Regina rides back to the castle hearing _“you’re just a girl”_ in place of Rocinante’s gallop.

 

* * *

 

Regina looks at her her reflection in the mirror, dressed in a yellow she had not picked for herself. It feels like she has been sown into its fabric, maybe the nimble fingers of her handmaidens had managed to do it. She keeps searching for something she recognizes in her reflection but her hair is held away from her powdered face. There are hardly traces of a girl looking back at her, of anything that might resemble her. Regina carefully pours water onto her hands determined to at least keep a part of herself. Even if it’s the part she understands the least.

 

“Why do you do that?” Snow asks watching her from the doorway.

 

Regina is quick to hide her wet hands behind her back and mask her surprise with the weakest of smiles.

 

“Do what, Snow?”

 

“Wash before eating,” Her head tilts as if she is trying to make sense of her. “Is it something they do in the South?”

 

“Yes,” It’s a half-truth but Regina cannot risk an explanation and can only imagine the look on King’s face as Snow tells it word for word at the royal table. “Southern traditions are hard to forget.”

 

“Now you’re up here with us and you get to make new traditions!” Snow grins as she rushes to take her hand to lead her out.

 

Regina is hardly able to stomach the spread laid out for them after that. Strawberry jam, eggs cooked in five different ways, duck and she feels sick with each bite of food. She watches Snow for a second, happily allowing more tea into her cup. Smiling at the server and it seems to her that it feels like so long ago she was just her age. Having silly dreams and wishing for impossible things. None of Snow’s dreams are deemed silly, nothing she wishes for impossible. Regina knows, she was one of those things she wished for. Plucked and gifted to her. She wonders how long she has until she withers.

 

“Regina?” Snow calls her name, it feels like she has been awakened.

 

“Yes?”

 

“I asked if you’d like to join me for a stroll after breakfast?” It’s soft, the way she asks, as if it were a request and not an order. Regina knows that even a shake of the head would turn into whispers among the servers and cooks and travel up and up the castle.

 

“Of course.”

 

The Sun is warm and the grass freshly trimmed where they walk. A Princess, a Queen and a whole line of women fussing over them. One woman to watch over their attire, two to carry wine and fruit, one to carry the game clubs and another an umbrella.   _“Yes, Your Majesty”_ is all she ever hears from any of them. _Majesty_ ,she hears it so much that it rings hollow in her ears, and Regina thinks it cannot be possibly be her. Not when she has to yet turn eighteen. And she wishes that she weren’t Queen like a girl who still believes. And she remembers green eyes that hadn’t regarded her as one, bloodied and clumsy hands. It’s a mistake to think about the girl, about blonde hair and scuffed boots. Regina had wanted her gone for this very reason, before she identifies the nervous warmth spreading through her chest.

 

Regina tries to drive her out of her mind as she watches the handmaidens set Snow’s game set on the grass. She accepts a club from one of them who fidgets when Regina catches her glancing her way.

 

“Are you sure you’re up for this game? You’re a little flustered.” Snow smiles and it’s the concern there that sends a shiver down her back.

 

“I’m fine.” She grits out defensively before she can stop herself. “I’m fine, Your Highness. The Northern chill just hits me a tad different.”

 

“All right, then!” It’s easy to please her, a well placed smile and she has forgotten what had set off her curiosity. “I draw first!”

 

The game extends far into the day, a table had been set up for them and all through it she had smiled. By the end of the day the whole of her aches from overwork. Regina whispers her prayer again in her bed, not knowing what she promises, but closing her eyes all the same.

 

* * *

 

Her eyes open just the same as they had the day before with the cool of the morning mist. There is little that changes every morning, Regina knows that, but she can’t help the way her prayer trembles today. Yesterday had been different, she remembers, the Sun had grown warmer on her skin in a way she never permits and there had been a girl looking back at her. It is not an indication that this morning will be special, Regina decides. In any case, she had wanted her gone. Gone where her words don’t ring in her ears and curious green eyes can’t see her. Her fingers are quick to lace her boots and quicker to braid her hair, too much time has been wasted lingering on pointless thoughts already.

 

Her feet are light on the stone floor and quieter still as she makes her away across the mud. Like a thief scurrying away before she is caught by the guard. She moves with the guilt of one. This absurd guilt that is always abandoned when she hears the first horse at the stables, a drink of water here and hay moving somewhere behind her. An unchanged and perfectly mundane morning, she breathes it  in. But for all the everyday scents mixing together the expected relief does not come. Instead a tight disappointment she cannot understand lodges itself in her chest as she makes her way to Rocinante’s stall. It sits there until she reaches an idiotically large pile of hay just outside of it, her brow furrows and her teeth bite into her lip.

 

“What _kind_ of…” Regina mumbles as she gets closer and stops short when she catches sight of blonde hair blending in with the hay.

 

Her face grows warm and her breath catches in her throat. Regina knots her fingers together as she steps over the sleeping girl’s body. The girl who had not gone when she had wished her gone and who she cannot help but examine as she sleeps. The tips of her nails are  black with dirt, cuts on her knuckles and soot on her forehead. A blue vest is thrown over chest, trying to shield herself from the cold. There is something about her, Regina finds despite herself. Under the mud and hay there is an odd sort of tenderness, lips barely parted in her sleep. It cannot can be allowed to continue, not when her face grows warmer still. Regina clears her throat and the girl barely stirs.

 

“Who..?” She groans rolling to her side away from her.

 

Regina rolls her eyes and resorts to poking her boots with her own. They feel oddly similar, like they have been plated with the same metal at the tip. The girl’s eyes finally snap open and she looks at Regina like she has forgotten where she is completely. She scrambles to get to her feet and slips her arms into her vest.

 

“Your...Your Majesty.” She manages with barely awake eyes. “I’m sorry, I thought…”

 

“I was someone else?” Regina says and notices the girl’s gaze on her. The girl nods. “I thought stable hands had their own sleeping quarters.”

 

“Uh, no room for me they said.” It is not a lie, she gathers. “So the stables it is.”

 

“You weren’t expected then?” A strange question considering how she had first encountered her. Regina moves into the stall and the girl follows like none of her handmaidens do. With no hint of obligation.

 

“No, Your Majesty.” The girl answers quietly. “I only just arrived yesterday.”  

 

“I remember.” Regina takes a brush to Rocinante hair as she considers her words. “From where, exactly?”

 

“Uh, from far away, Your Majesty.” The girl takes another brush but stops short of touching her horse. “May I?”

 

Regina nods not knowing what to make of her. “You don’t look like you’re from far away. With a little luck you could have even been born at the castle itself.” The girl says nothing as she brushes Rocinante’s back, decidedly avoiding her eyes. “What is your name, anyway?”

 

“Emma, Your Majesty.” It sounds like a secret has just been wrestled out her. “Swan. Emma Swan.”

 

“Emma Swan.” Regina repeats lowly. “It sounds like you came up with it yourself.”

 

The girl’s eyes harden and Regina recognizes something in them, something like restraint. It easily gets under her skin and too close to her own truth.

 

“I did, Your Majesty.” Emma Swan steps aside, allowing Regina to saddle her horse. She watches her, Regina knows. A girl with no family perhaps, only those born alone choose their own names. Maybe that is why her eyes are always on her, on the Queen. As Regina begins to lead Rocinante out of the stall she turns to Emma Swan, who had known so little yesterday morning.

 

“Your Majesty?” She asks with apprehension.

 

“You know, I liked you better when you didn’t know I was Queen.” Regina finds her words lacking the harshness she might have intended.

 

Emma Swan blinks at her and fights a smile as Regina leaves her.

 

Out in the pale green of the fields Regina cannot fight smile. A morning like the last.

 

* * *

 

The music room is a sort of pale green furnished with newly upholstered sofas and chairs.  The piano forte is one of the few in the land, the polished ivory reflects the sunlight coming through the window. Regina knows that she is smiling by the ache of her cheeks. Snow sings a song she learned from the birds and twirls as she does. Mother would have never allowed this from her, no. Her back would have been straight as she sang in a language that felt foreign on her tongue and her fingers pressed following the one,two, three, fours of the sheets. She hadn’t known at Snow’s age what mother had been training her to do, to be. Sitting here with her hands folded over lap she understands. All the air has left the room.

 

“Well?” Snow asks with her too big eyes, starved for something Regina cannot give her. “How was I?”

 

“Beautiful, dear.” Regina feels stretched out already but she knows that faltering now is something she cannot afford.

 

“How about you play and I sing?” She takes Regina’s hand to pull her up and she must oblige. “Your mother said you play very well! Which is great because not many know how to but you do!”

 

Snow’s excitement cuts through her and suddenly she feels what it is like to be a doll. Kept at the bottom of a trunk until cunning fingers pull her out and sit her on the finest of stools. Brush her hair, paint her face to be handed to her owner. Her owner who crushes her with the weight of her embrace.

 

“Yes, that sounds lovely.” Regina hears the words come out but they are not her own. They belong to the Queen, perhaps.

 

One, two, three, four her fingers click on the keys, one two, three, four and the day brings with it more songs. Too many songs that dry her throat and cramp her fingers. Regina eyes stay on the green of the walls and thinks of open fields. Green, green, green eyes.

 

The last note of the final piece comes and Regina is relieved to see Snow be taken away to her chambers for an afternoon nap. A feathered bed awaits her and she wonders if she is the kind of princess to insist that she is not tired, that naps are for babes and not for twelve year old princesses. If she has even once resisted her royal treatment, turned away her tea and kept treasures under her pillow. No, she decides, Snow is far too happy for secrets.

 

After the Sun sets and her throat still burns Regina watches her handmaidens as she gives up on her book. None ever look at her and move unaware that she is considering who among them is less likely to pass her secrets around the castle. Certainly not Theresa who fetches food from the kitchens, news of whatever morsels she’d left behind will travel down and be shared as soup is made. Not Agatha who collects her clothes, every red single stain of hers is known to those with hands hardened by soap. Bertha who sighs contently when speaking of the Princess would exchange Regina for a shinier thing for her mistress.  Ruth, who is quiet when scenting her skin and careful with the small curls around her temples, she could trust. Regina waits until trays and baskets have been clear and that all that is left to do is ready her for bed.

 

“Ruth,” Regina says as her handmaiden unfolds her hair by the mirror. “I need you to do something for me.”

 

“Anything, Your Majesty.” She replies much too demurely for a woman her age.

 

“There is a new stable hand,” Regina hesitates but Ruth’s eyes are wide with attention. “Her name is Emma Swan. Make sure she has a place at the sleeping quarters with the rest of them.”

 

“Forgive me, Your Majesty. How could I..?” Her words stop short along with her fingers in Regina’s hair.

 

“Tell them,” Regina breathes in, not ready for the words she will say next. “It is an order from your Queen.”

 

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Ruth sounds pleased with her reply, even as she looks only at her own hands as she works.

 

Her handmaiden leaves with a timid smile and Regina feels oddly satisfied. She whispers her prayers lying in bed knowing sleep will not come soon. She pictures Ruth going down the very stairs she uses every morning, picking up her brown skirts. Sees her take a lantern and her face glowing in the dark as she makes her way to sleeping quarters. Regina thinks of the tall man with the sullen expression who is in charge of the horses and grooms, believes that he might try to close the door on her as she requests that Emma Swan be given a place. Maybe Emma Swan might be sitting somewhere close, tearing bread and soaking it in her soup, and catching Ruth’s words. Her eyes light up when _it is an order from my Queen_ rings in the air and the man cannot deny her.  It makes her feel warm all over and she tosses her covers aside. Regina hates the weight on her shoulders, hates the whispers, and the titles but maybe a warm bed for a girl could make her forget for a while. A secret sliver of contentment in the middle of everything.

 

* * *

 

Rocinante blows air through his nose, the surest sign that he is growing restless.

 

“Don’t tell me you are too tough for braids?” Emma Swan asks him as one hoofs hits the ground. “I think you could get away with them. Royal horse and all.”

 

Regina reigns in whatever laugh threatens to escape her because this ridiculous, ordinary girl is keeping her horse company. This girl who she could not wish away seems to be waiting for her.

 

“I tried it once, you know.” Regina informs her and feels a tug of _something_ as she jumps in surprise. “He didn’t take too kindly to it. Too tight on him.”

 

“Your Majesty…” The look on her face tells her she must be remembering yesterday morning and thinks very hard about her words. “He likes to run free, I take it?”

 

“He does.” Regina fetches a brush and begins her morning ritual, remembers when it was not something that merited hushed voices and the break of dawn. “He misses it. Misses the land.” She says before she can stop herself.

 

For a moment there is only the sound of brush on hair to cut the silence between them.

 

“What was it like?” Emma Swan asks with genuine curiosity.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty...I” Regina throws her a look that silences her apologies.

 

“The land, you mean?” The girl nods and she wonders if she should answer. If she owes her any kind of truth about herself. “Heat sticks to your skin and it has more color than I can remember. It just feels... _big_.”

 

Emma Swan is quiet again, as if she has just pieced a puzzle together. Hanging on to each detail Regina has shared like she wants to keep it safe.

 

“Very different from where you come from, Miss Swan?” Her lips part before closing again, as if takes her great effort to keep from answering. “You did say you are from far away.”

 

“It is nothing like your land, Majesty. Colder.” Emma Swan presses her lips together, with something seeming not quite right on her face “I’ll fetch your saddle.”

 

Regina watches her carry it with a bit of a struggle and settle it with less expert hands and questions about her arise in her mind again. Who is she that dares to look her in the eye one moment and then retrieve into titles and apologies? She had not known she was Queen. A girl who asks about her land in a way nobles could not feign, from a land so far away that she knows nothing about Regina. Perhaps there is a limit as to how far whispers travel, perhaps a girl with royal blood from two peoples and a mother who weaves hay into gold is not known beyond this kingdom.

 

“Do you know who I am, Miss Swan?” Regina asks as she moves to loosen some of the straps on Rocinante.

 

“The Queen.” She answers dumbfounded.

 

“That is not what I meant,” Regina sighs and turns her eyes on her. “You don’t even know my name, do you?”

 

The girl shakes her head, her face flushing as she the tightens leather on the saddle. Her fingers accidentally brush with hers and the red of her face becomes more furious. It is something beyond embarrassment, Regina can tell, it looks an awful lot like guilt. Incomprehensible guilt that she feels compelled to lift like she never has before.

 

“Regina.” Emma Swan gazes at her and Regina is glad that her skin does not give her away so easily. However, a short laugh does slip out. “And no, I did not come up with it myself.”

 

This time it’s the girl who laughs and seems to have forgotten who they are meant to be.

 

Regina begins keeping track how each morning is like the last. How when it is still blue outside Emma Swan is at the stables, eager eyes that dare to remain on her. How every morning there is one more thing that merits a laugh. Regina also begins to keep track how each morning is different than the last.

 

Today as she feels her stiff hands grabbing onto the the saddle Emma Swan extends a hand to her. She is beaming at her and Regina feels dumbstruck, looking at _this_ girl and not understanding the gesture.

 

“Need a boost?” Emma Swan asks her and there is a brightness to her now “Your Majesty?” She adds almost like an afterthought and Regina takes her hand.

 

“Thank you, Miss Swan.” She feels ridiculous saying it, like she has suddenly learned what it is to be shy.

 

Regina begins to ride out of the stables every morning, accepting Emma Swan’s helping hand and easy smiles. It makes the pinks and yellows of Snow's afternoon teas easier, it makes her smiles feel less stretched out. Her body aches a little less when she climbs into bed every night.  She shouldn't indulge, Regina knows that, it is dangerous to stop fighting the warmth that takes over her every morning, every night. It makes her say her prayers above a whisper, forgetting that she must hide all that makes her up. Dangerous, but she cannot help it.

 

“You're not as bad at this as I thought.” Regina cannot keep the playfulness off her lips. She inspects the straps on Rocinante's saddle and admires the shine of his mane.

 

“High compliment.” She catches Emma Swan rolling her eyes and something in her soars with it. “I _am_ a groom, you know?”

 

“I had my doubts.” Regina says resisting the urge to touch her, even if it is just to poke her.

 

There is a shadow on her expression for just a moment, like it sometimes happens with her. As if Regina has stepped on some secret part of her pride.

 

“Horses just don’t like me at first.” Emma Swan settles as she shrugs her shoulders. “They get better with time.”

 

“Maybe you grow on them.” Regina had meant it to sound dry but instead it had taken a sort of mortifying honesty that had softened it.

 

“Maybe.” She ducks her head and Regina wishes she still wanted her gone.

 

Emma Swan offers her hand again and words escape her as she settles onto her horse.”Ride out with me.”

 

“What will they say if I do?” She asks worried for her, Regina realizes. “What will I tell them if they ask?”

 

“They won’t,” She can’t keep her voice from cracking. “No one will even notice unless the Princess requests me.”

 

If Regina had looked away she might have missed the shine in her eyes, how jaw sets looking she wants to fight the notion.

 

“I’ll go get a horse that won’t try and kill me.” Her lips fail to form a full smile, a small gesture meant to comfort her.

 

“Perhaps I overestimated your skills.” Regina says after clearing her throat even if hiding behind her words seems pointless now.

 

Emma Swan throws her a look over her shoulder and Regina cannot remember what it was like before this relentless beating resided in her chest.

 

* * *

 

Blue has turn into deep violet these mornings, where she rises earlier. Sometimes Regina feels she had just uttered her nightly prayers before she is doing it again. It matters very little to her, but she will not admit to Emma Swan. To the girl riding a mare next to her, each day growing more and more indiscrete about her yawns.

 

“We could rest a while.” Regina tells trying and failing to catch her yawn.

 

“And miss out on all this?”She gestures towards the moonlit dark of the early hours, to the buzzing of flies. An act, of course,still an eager stable hand not willing to admit defeat.

 

“Suit yourself, Miss Swan.” Rocinante protests at her command to halt. “I am resting my eyes while I still can.”

 

Regina slips off the saddle and makes her way to a broad tree just at the edge of the woods. She settles her back against and watches Emma Swan take tentative steps  towards her. Afraid she might be asked to leave, rejected for assuming too much.

 

“Sit.” Regina says so she does not have to ask.

 

Emma Swan sighs lying back and from the corner of her eye she catches her face softening.

 

“Is the bed at the sleeping quarters enough?” She asks because she had forgotten all this time, because Regina wants something other than crickets out here.

 

“Good enough, yeah.” Her laugh is tired and looking at her with one of her eyes closed. “Thanks for that by the way. Know it was you because Bobby complained for three days.”

 

“Well, couldn’t have you stealing all the hay for yourself.” Regina turns her head upwards to look at the dimming stars through the foliage of the trees. She feels her thighs ache and her shoulders heavy from the hours she has cut from her sleep. She hadn’t thought it mattered because trying for dreams seems pointless. Her eyes begin to droop, she does not fight it.

 

“It’s dreams that keep me up.” Emma Swan mumbles her words, if she had said anything at all. “Don’t want to have them. I used to hold on to them but…”

 

She sounds distant and Regina feels her body slumping, her head falling on her shoulder. She doesn’t feel strong enough to lift her head, she cannot even tell if this is real. Regina finds it does not make a difference.

 

“Quién serás esta noche en el oscuro del sueño, del otro muro?” The words slip out in a dreamy breath and she cannot regret them. Not in this half-awake not yet blue world that surrounds them.

 

“Who will you be tonight in the dark of sleep, at the other side of the  wall?” They come out slow and quiet and Regina knows that this must have turned into a dream. Emma Swan comes from a land far away but not so far that she speaks her tongue. Life would not give her this.

 

“I don’t know.” It’s the last thing Regina hears herself say.  

 

The clouds are tinted pink and orange with the Sun that threatens their time. Emma Swan unfolds bread and cheese as if it were gold and silver. Kept from dinner from the night before, it’s easy to tell. Regina cannot think of words of gratitude when she splits the bread and cheese, when she had remained silent when water ran down her fingers before she accepted it. Idiot, she wants to call her, idiot stable hand saving food for the Queen.

 

“I heard there’s a celebration today” Emma Swan says with her eyebrows meeting. “Stable boys won’t shut up about it.”

 

“Who can even track in this kingdom?” Regina answers with disgust. “A pink dressed was picked out for me, that’s all I know. Last month it was a white one.”  

 

“Next month it will be a green one.” She snorts but there something like bitterness on her expression. “Maybe there’ll be joust?”

 

“I would love to see knights get knocked to the ground.” Regina says thinking of a couple that deserve mud in their teeth. “Whatever it is, I hope it’s over quickly.”  She pictures it so clearly, Snow’s hand tightly clasped around hers. The King is in his throne, nobles and commoners only sparing her a glance or two. Bows, curtsies and flowers for the Princess. Regina digs the heel of her boots into the dirt and locks her jaw.  

 

“Maybe it’s your lucky day.” Emma Swan tells her with her mouth full.

 

Regina follows suit and nearly chokes on the bread. “This is the hardest bread I have ever eaten.” She coughs out. “I think I chipped a tooth.”

 

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty. That’s what happens to bread overnight.” Her tone is light, too light. Like a needle on skin.

 

The wind rustles the leaves around them and it has become quiet enough that Regina can hear it on the grass.

 

“Don’t call me that,” She gazes at her, wishing she could glare. “Not you, Emma.”

 

Her face falls, like she had just stepped on stepped on broken glass. Green eyes become clouded and only clear up when a thing far beyond sympathy settles in them.

 

“Regina?” Her name is the question being asked and Emma’s fingers on her hand seem to be asking a different one.

 

“Yes.” She answers and cups her cheek as if it were an old habit.

 

Emma shudders under her touch and regards her like no one ever has before. Careful and determined about some unknown cause. It’s this and the heat in her chest she blames for kissing her. For smiling when she feels the crumbs on her lips. It’s easy to kiss her, let the heat take over. To feel it in her mouth, feel it when she grazes her teeth on Emma’s lips. Easy when nothing in her life ever had been.

 

“Regina.” Emma grits out when the break apart. She decides that she’d do anything to hear it again.

 

Her second kiss turns into another and another until the leaves are being crushed beneath her and her fingers have found the bare skin under Emma’s shirt. With her knee between hers one Regina wonders if her body is anything like hers, what were to happen should fingers search elsewhere. Maybe she’s running a fever, maybe they both are burning hot in the middle of Autumn. Feeling every inch of their skin, the roundness of their breasts. The trail down to their navels. Regina stops right at Emma’s waist, thumbing the pale softness of her belly.

 

“Please,” Emma begs not knowing quite for what. “Regina, please.”

 

Regina is clumsy when unlacing her trousers, working on instinct, on what she knows of herself. Slow and deliberate.Emma moves her lips away and presses her forehead to her shoulder, her breathing harder and harder. Then her movements become stronger and faster, picking up the rhythm of Emma’s body. They both strangle every sound trying to escape them.

 

“Fuck.” Her voice is hoarse and  heat shoots all over her again, stronger in need.

 

Emma kisses her shoulder, kisses her chest through the cotton until she’s between her legs.

 

“Is this…?” She’s shy and flushed all over. “Do you want this, Regina?”

 

She nods with all her strength having forgotten every word. Regina only remembers Emma’s name when her lips are on her thighs and her own nails are digging into the dirt. Emma, Emma when her mouth is nervous on her. Emma when she breathes out in exhaustion and her head rests just below her chest.

 

Stars are dimming again in another dark morning out in the edge of the woods. Emma’s chin is resting on her belly, eyes intent on never letting her go. Regina’s hand is tangled in her blonde curls, the pad of her fingers rubbing circles on her scalp. It feels like they have been doing this forever, losing sleep and counting hours until it’s time to lie in the grass again. It seems so long ago that she had wished her gone, gone where her eyes couldn’t follow her. Gone before she could put a word to what courses through her.

 

“What would you be if you weren’t Queen?” Emma asks quietly.

 

“Happy.” She replies without much thought and Emma bites her lips wanting more. “I don’t know, really. Perhaps a groom.”

 

She buries her nose in her shift and Regina can feel her laughing. “And you? What would you be if you weren’t a stable hand?”

 

“I haven’t thought about it in a while,” Her heart races when Emma lifts her gaze up to her. “Don’t know, as long as there’s a fire every night I think I’m good.”

 

“In a cottage somewhere that no one can find.”

 

“Right,” Regina must be grinning judging by Emma’s shine. “Behind a stream?”

 

“And it’s never cold.” She completes thinking of mangoes, figs and coffee in the air.

 

Emma kisses over her clothes, sweetly like she is making a promise.

 

“I know the way out of these woods.”

 

Regina knows she loves her.

 

* * *

 

It is only past two in the morning, they had planned it this way. Leave before the last day of Autumn, before the cold is too harsh for a Queen and stable hand on the run. She says her prayers in her chambers one last time, feels the words she cannot understand bounce of the stone and rock. She packs nothing, just buttons the warmest of the Queen’s coats over her clothes. Regina takes one look at her reflection, ridiculous with her braided hair, boots are losing their color and the fine fabric of royal garments. One day, maybe, they will use it to feed their fire.

 

Regina bothers to really look at the castle as she leaves, she wants to remember it so that she never forgets what this moment felt like. Towering turrets and ivy dying at its walls. If she could she would tear it down stone by stone. But leaving it behind  with what could be happiness bubbling to the surface is more than enough. If there were people around at this hour they would think her deranged, walking towards the stables looking like a lovestruck idiot.

 

She expects Emma to be there, handing her Rocinante’s reins but his stall is quiet and empty of her. Her horse’s back is bare and the hay on the ground undisturbed. Regina waits for who knows what Emma must do to leave her sleeping quarters unnoticed. She waits until a rooster sings to go in search of her. She cannot find her in any odd pile of hay or rushing to get her. Her heart begins to beat faster with all the possibilities. What if a groom had seen them and cared enough to pass it along to the King’s ears? Could she under lock and key somewhere? Her sweat is cold underneath her coat and her thoughts become erratic. Regina has to find her, she has to. She returns to her horse and he must sense her distress, lying low for her. There is no time for a saddle, Regina only holds onto Rocinante’s black mane. His gallop is faster than he has ever trained for, pale grass is but a blur and so is the spot where she had first stumbled upon Emma. Her cheeks are wet and her eyes sting and it has nothing to do with the harshness of the wind. The edge of the woods is right in front of her and she doesn’t stop. Regina is in the middle of its darkness before she knows it, not even the moon is above her.

 

“Emma?!” She shouts when Rocinante has stopped. Regina jumps off him and tries to listen for her voice. “Emma!”

 

There is only the sound of the woods and the odd shapes slowly taking form before her eyes.

 

“Emma!” Regina calls again and again until her throat burns with her eyes.

 

“Puta!” She curses with the rawness she keeps tucked away in this place. Regina kicks at what feels to be branch, stopping only when it feels broken under the metal of her boot. Regina falls on her knees, positive that she will wretch from this furious despair of hers. If she could discover who is responsible she would know who to hate, who deserves this anger radiating off her. She wishes she knew, Regina wishes she knew so that they could hurt like she is.

 

“Hello, dearie.” A voice says from the dark. “Awful morning, isn't it?”

 

Regina falls back and crawls her way to Rocinante. “Who said that?!”

 

“Friend or foe, depends on who you ask.” He snickers by her ear and Rocinante neighs with fright.  “I might have a way out of your...predicament.”

 

“What would you know of my problems?” The words cut as the rise in her throat. “Do you even know who…”,

 

“Queen Regina, born  two royal peoples and heir to millers and murderers alike. I know, I know.” If she could only see him to lunge at him. “And I know of your little...secret.” He is delighted.

 

“What did you do to her?! Where is she?!” Twigs and rocks dig into the palm of her hands but she cannot bring herself to care.

 

“ _I_ didn't do anything and I imagine she must be in a land far, far away.” He giggles like a child would and Regina could kill him had she a sword.

 

“Do you think I’m an idiot?!” Regina remembers last seeing her tucking away errant strands of hair behind her ear this morning. Emma had bowed, fighting a smile as Ruth had come to fetch her at the stables.

 

“No, dearie. Short-sighted perhaps. Tell me, after running away in the small of the morning what were you planning on doing? Hide away in a broken down shack for the rest of your life and call it happiness?”

 

Regina says nothing and tries hurling a rock in his direction.

 

“Such temper in a you.” Something about him reminds her of mother but her bloods runs too hot to turn cold now. “There are other solutions to your problem.”

 

“Like what?” She barks out. “What could you possibly do to help me find her?”

 

“Ah, ah. I don't promise anything without a deal first.”  

 

Regina’s breath is short with rage but green eyes and the possibilities of the future  make her reconsider the man’s words.

 

“What do you want?”

 

“A hair from your head.” He snickers again. “Aren't I generous?”

 

“Why?”

 

“Hair from a witch's daughter does wonders in the right hands.” He pauses and Regina can feel the cold of his body nearing her. “Even win a girl's freedom.”

 

“Fine, you demented little…” Regina plucks a hair from her head and stretches her hand out. A wisp of wind takes it from her.

 

“See you soon, dearie.”

 

“What?! Get...get back here..you.. you!” She struggles with her words, too many of them jumbling in her mind. Curses and words she has never understood.

 

Regina gets to her feet and feels a different kind of heat pulsating through her veins, untempered and unattached to a face and a smile. This one feels like it will take her too, scorch and scar her skin. If she could just reach out and _hurt_ with it. Suddenly red and orange ignite in the dark of the woods, fire. Fire born from her hands and burning strong. Regina is paralyzed looking at it, understanding for the first time what the man had meant. She raises her eyes to the woods.

 

She is alone.


	3. Chapter 3

Her feet ache inside her old boots but still she wonders if it’s worth unlacing them for a few hours of sleep. Emma sighs in contentment deciding that it’s best to  leave them on, she’ll have to saddle two horses soon. There will be enough time to wiggle her toes in the grass after, when they are far away from this place. When Regina isn’t Queen anymore and she is just the name she had given herself. Late night fires and crickets chirping somewhere where it’s never cold. Emma reaches towards the lantern in her quarters but the room stretches away from her and her bones begin to be pulled and pressed. She remembers now in the dark, wanting to cry out in pain that this had been some sort of miracle. Emma had forgotten, it had been so easy to believe her own lies. Easy to believe she was a stable hand with no family, easier still when she had witnessed Regina’s smile grow wider every day. She had forgotten that it was all borrowed time and made up names. Maybe she does sob in this nothingness when the creature’s words come back to her _Be warned, magic will take you where it thinks you should go. It will bring you back when it feels like it._ Her eyes are burning when her knees hit the wooden floor beneath her and her mouth tastes like ash. Splinters cut through her pants and dusts settles on her face. Emma lifts her head and sees a torn portrait of the Queen’s and it only confirms that she is back at the beginning. Inside a forbidden castle that holds the Queen. Regina. 

 

She coughs and falters in her steps as she moves down the hallway but Emma knows she is cursed and trapped in this castle. Emma thinks it impossible now feeling the swell of her lips from where Regina had marked them this morning, she had seen her give one last look over her shoulder. It happened, it did. Emma has to find her. She limps as she tries to pick up her pace, go down the hall and try the turrets she had only seen from the stables. There is a staircase but she hasn’t set foot in it before something snatches her ankle and drags her away. Emma glimpses enough of it to know it’s one of the castle’s vines and as she tries to reach for it, another and another come to restrain until her entire body is covered. As much as she fights it the vines just tighten around her and only come undone when she is back at the gallery. 

 

“Emma?!” She hears Mulan shout in the distance. “Where are you?!” 

 

Hearing her friend’s voice for the first time in a season makes her hesitate but she cannot give up. Emma walks the same path to meet the same fate again and again. She blinks back her tears and the sharp pain on her shoulders and tries for it one more time. This time pulls herself on the ground as the vines tangle around her legs, grabs at the old carpet under her fingers. Her teeth bite into her lip and she tastes her own blood, not that it matters. It could never matter. The vines loosen their grip and she thinks that maybe she has paid the price. Then there is a push and darkness again giving her hope that magic had decided to take her back. Back to her cramped room and hay and Regina. Regina. 

 

“Fuck.” Emma grunts wishing there will be dark and angry eyes looking down at her. 

 

There are none when she raises her eyes but she realizes she is in a place she recognizes. Knows too well. Rocinante’s stall, empty. Rotting and covered in ivy and cobwebs. Emma stumbles again and looks out to the castle, it’s the same cursed castle hidden away by wilderness. She had never understood what it meant to take a knife to the heart but she does now, feeling how the wood under her hands begs to crumble. Her chest feels like it has been cut open and she is furious like she had never thought possible. It cannot compare to anything Princess Emma might have known before she set out to come here. Emma kicks at the wood with her boots but the rot breaking under them cannot close her wound. Still, she keeps at it until dust is lodging itself in her throat and her cheeks are stiff and dry from her tears. 

 

“Emma! Emma…” Mulan voice is louder the cracking wood. “I heard a struggle and...what happened?” 

 

“Nothing,” She replies roughly. Her friend tilts her head, expecting more from her. “The castle. It has magic.” 

 

“I gathered.” Her shoulders relax but she does not approach her. “I got lost in there too. Don’t know how long you were gone.” 

 

“I don’t either. It just..uh..took me and next thing I knew...” Emma breathes in the musk of the old stall and is not ready for what she is about to ask of Mulan. “Let’s get out of here.” 

 

Mulan laughs. “I would drag you out even if you hadn’t asked.” 

 

Emma can’t force herself to return her laugh as she walks and tries not to wince when she pats her shoulder. 

 

“Did you find what you were looking for?” She knows Mulan is eyeing her with skepticism but Emma walks away hurting as she tries to keep her back straight. 

 

“Yeah. Yeah, think I did.” 

 

Emma looks at what remains of the castle and silently promises to return. 

 

* * *

A pin pricks her skin but she barely fidgets, Emma just keeps her eyes on the mirror. Watching the royal dressmaker fitting her for the lace dress she had promised her mother. It’s peach colored and it blends right in with her skin. She wonders if that is the point of it but even now with pins and needles pinching her and holding the fabric tight around her she cannot bring herself to care. It feels like she left something of herself in the past, something that maybe belongs to Regina. Emma can’t tell, can’t call it anything but  _ emptiness.  _ Mulan had suspected something when she had said next to nothing on the road back to the palace. She had lied away from the fire and watched fireflies in the dark. Fireflies she’d been able to catch for Regina when their mornings were coming earlier and earlier. Emma feels that emptiness now, like a hole at the bottom of pool of water. 

 

“What do you think of it, Your Highness?” The dressmaker asks with her hands clasped in front of her face. 

 

“It’s wonderful, Celine!” Her mother exclaims practically leaping from her chair. “It’s so delicate and just what we want! Isn’t it, Emma?” 

 

“Yea..yes. It’s lovely.” She watches her mother’s bright eyes on the mirror, sees them go brighter as thumbs the lace of her sleeve. 

 

“It’s going to carry so beautifully when it’s finished, oh you’ll see! Emma will be the talk of the ball!” 

 

If she were whole today, if something inside thought about balls and dresses at all, Emma might have argued with her mother. She might have said that she is the Princess, people would be talking about her no matter what she did. A sack would probably do a better job at that. But today she feels the embroidery itch against her bare skin and remembers when she had been a stable hand. A stable hand who had watched from the distance. 

 

_ The kitchen had been full of steam, it’d made her hair curl and her stomach growl. Emma hadn’t been able to tell if the ache at her belly came from hunger or from laughing too hard as the Sun rose. Either way she’d blamed Regina for it, sneaking into the kitchens dragging in dirt with her. She’d planned to steal a roll and some sausage before anyone could notice it gone.  _

 

_ “She won’t eat a bite! It just sits there on her plate!” A woman comes in swatting flies away. “Perfectly good boar and that...the Queen won’t even let her fork touch it!”  _

 

_ Emma had stuck to the wall and watched the woman’s expression grow sour.  _

 

_ “Oh come off it, Maggie. She’s probably not hungry, besides it’s up to the cook to be offended.” Another woman had replied burying her hands into a dough.  _

 

_ “Shouldn’t have brought her blood into this castle, if you ask me.” Maggie had said and then had sunk her teeth into a pear.  _

 

_ “Shush! She is still Queen and should the King hear a word…”  _

 

_ “The King doesn’t care, Kat!” Her mouth had been half full and Emma had wondered if she’d choke on her fruit. “Her job’s to sit there in her pretty lace dress and at least eat her damn food! Some of us have got to work harder for crumbs.”  _

 

_ She had almost spoken up then, ready to fight for Regina. Willing to lay down everything in her defense but she had remembered her place. She’d remembered secrets and wishes spoken in the grass. Emma had chosen instead to walk along the wall until she reached the entry to the dining room.  There’d been no vines covering the walls, no signs of magic in the past. She’d held her breath as she’d avoided the colorful carpets and stepped only on wood with the tip of her toes. Finally she’d reached a corner where she could hide and catch a glimpse of her. Regina had looked beautiful because that’d been inevitable. Dressed in the lightest of violets and the lace of her sleeves had seem too fine. Like it would have crumbled like sugar if touched. Her hair had been pinned to a side and her face had been been made paler. Emma had watched her sigh wishing she could move away from her hiding spot.  _

 

_ “Regina?” She’d heard a girl’s voice ask. _

 

_ “Yes, Snow?” Regina had replied like she had been shaken awake and Emma had been frozen in place hearing her mother’s name.  _

 

_ She’d hadn’t dared to search for her at the table.  _

 

“Emma, sweetheart?” Her mother eyes her with concern and her hands clasp hers. She knows there had been a question had been asked and she hadn’t been able to answer. “Are you feeling alright?” 

 

“I’m fine,” It feels like someone is else is speaking with her voice. “Just tired, I guess.” She tries her best to give her mother a smile and it seems to convince her. 

 

“You get some rest,” She grabs her chin like she were still five years old. “We have busy weeks ahead of us.” 

 

Emma nods trying her hardest to keep dread away from her expression. 

 

“Oh, it’s going to be so much fun! The best ball we’ve ever thrown!” 

 

She shivers while standing here covered in lace and pins and needles as her mother smiles her widest smile.

 

* * *

Her steps are unsure in heeled shoes and she fears she might trip over her dress. Emma had seen her reflection in each polished armor, in every crystal and every mirror on the way to the ballroom. She had worried that it had been someone else looking back at her, someone with flowers in her hair. Emma still worries. Her father squeezes her hand and his expression is only warmth.

 

“The thing to remember about these things,” He whispers conspiratorially like he used to do. “Is to never give anyone too much attention. And eat a sweet after each dance. It makes it less... bad.” 

 

Emma shakes her head. “Dad, you’re the King.”  

 

“I wasn’t always.” Her father winks at her like he always does after those words. 

 

The ballroom doors open and trumpets announce their entrance. Her ears ring as they make their way down the stairs with no announcement necessary, her mother had planned it this way. Her counsellor and planner had called it a stroke of genius, to present the Princess in such a way, just when she is on cusp of becoming a woman. Emma had sat there nibbling on yellow and pink sugar cookies and heard herself be called the crown jewel of the Kingdom. Perhaps she should have brought herself to care enough to protest but she had not. Her mother is standing and extending a hand to her and Emma asks herself if this what it was like for Regina. Ringing ears and eyes that follow every misstep. It’s only when she is standing small between her parents that she feels unseen. 

 

“It is my great pleasure to officially commence this grand ball!” Her mother exclaims and waves at all the nobles gathered here. The clapping is deafening, it makes Emma doubt that she is still in her body at all. 

 

Flutes and harps begin to play and under the light of the many chandeliers it feels unreal. The white and orange flowers that change color with the fairy enchantments that keep them alive in Autumn, the feathers on ladies’ hairs and golden trim on the lord’s shoulders. Heels on wooden floors and laughter that rings false. Emma thinks of ripping her dress and running to the library, ask Henry to hide from the world. She wants her boots and to be counting down the hours until the break of dawn. 

 

“Your Majesties, you have outdone yourselves tonight.” A young noble says bowing with one hand behind his back. “May I have the first dance with the Princess?” 

 

If Emma were a better princess she would be able to place his dark hair and plain expression but he seems to blend in perfectly with the room. She knows she is supposed to agree to his request, Emma knows it had been arranged since charts and schedules had been drawn up. 

 

“Of course.” She replies with another’s voice.

 

He extends his hand towards her and for the second time since trumpets announced her entry she thinks of Regina. His hand is finely gloved and Emma resents the alien feeling on her own hand. 

 

_ “I can maybe think of one ball that wasn’t completely terrible.” Regina had slowed down Rocinante’s pace so that they could ride side by side.  _

 

_ “What wasn’t so terrible about it?” _

 

_ “I wasn’t paired off with anyone,” She’d laughed at the memory. “Everyone sort of danced together. Mother was very unhappy, I remember that.”  _

 

_ “Was this back...uh..” Emma had lacked the words to ask her question  _

 

_ “Back at my land? Yes Miss Swan, it was.” Regina had been so amused that she’d not even minded her cheeks and ears turning red. “It was warm that night. Well, warmer than usual.”  _

 

_ Emma had wanted to ask for more, anything to keep that half forgotten happiness in Regina’s voice. And Regina had given her more, it hadn’t been difficult to imagine them dancing together.  On bare feet and dressed in white to rhythm of guitars, violins and drums. Maybe if they had been together then they would have run into the sand and sunk into it. Laughing all the way down.  _

 

She looks around this ball until she finds her partner examining her, understanding how little a princess commands. 

 

“Were you lost in thought, Your Highness?” He says smugly like he has read her thoughts. Were they two grooms she’d be able to shove him away and think nothing of it. 

 

“Just admiring the room.” Emma carves out a smile for him and for her mother watching so proudly. 

 

He may speak as the music carries them but his words slip past her and some part of her may reply. Emma blinks at the lights and the magic of the night and had never wished harder for crickets and the sound of tired feet on stone. At one point another gloved hand takes her and maybe he bows. Maybe she smiles again but all their clean shaven face blur together until the music stops. It’s with the modest applause of the lords and ladies over her mother's words that her feet carry her out to the balcony. 

 

Emma drops on stone bench overlooking the gardens, the glow of the fire and moon on the ponds and fountains even her breath before she is aware she had been short of it all this time. She thinks of pins and needles and the bad ache of her cheeks and remembers the Queen who was just a girl,  _ just a girl _ . There is a knot in her throat, like Henry would say, tightening as she tries not to cry. She is not allowed because she is only a princess and not the Queen.

 

“It’s getting colder already,” Mulan voice comes softly behind her. “A week more and we wouldn't be out here.” 

 

“Yeah.” Emma's voice wavers and she feels smaller than she has ever felt. 

 

Her friend sits at her side and unfastens her sword from her waist. Mulan says nothing, just watches the night with her. Watches until the muffled music comes through the glass again. 

 

“Something happened to you inside the Evil Queen’s castle.” It isn't a question but it comes as an acknowledgement instead of a bitter revelation. 

 

“No,” Emma  lies because she had made a deal with a creature and because Regina still holds that missing piece of hers. “It was a dumb quest and is not worth thinking about.” She shrugs her shoulders but cannot look her in the eye. 

 

“Emma,” Mulan presses like she never does. “What's really going on?” 

 

“It's been a long couple of weeks. You know how my mother can get.” She tries for Mulan's sake even if she knows there is very little she can do to throw her off. “That's all it is. Really.” 

 

She sighs and hangs her head low and Emma feels the pull of guilt of all the secrets she keeps from her. Her friend picks up her sword and gets to her feet.

 

“I want to believe that's true,” Mulan tells her securing her sword at her hip. “Or whatever it is will eat you up inside. I hope there is someone you do tell.” 

 

“Mulan…” She begins.

 

“I have to get back to my post.” 

 

Emma nods with her eyes still on the night. With a few steps she knows she is alone again. 

 

* * *

Trees had gone naked before Emma could think of counting the days, she had only known it to be the last day of Autumn from the threatening frost in her window. She had stayed in her chambers that day, watching it melt. Thinking of the last day of Autumn that would have been, a runaway Queen and stable hand on horseback.  Emma had claimed to be catching a cold in hopes of being left alone. She should have known better, after so many years of being tended to. Her mother had come to check on her every hour, with a palm to her forehead. She'd never been good at feeling for a fever but her handmaidens had followed instructions of soup and damp towels. Her one day recovery had been called miraculous and birds had sung for the occasion. That is how winter began.

 

Emma watches the frost again, her gaze lingering on its branches spread out on glass. She hears the clink of a spoon and remembers that she is sitting in a tea room. It smells of sugar and bitter tea leaves and she is warm in her clothes. Too warm. It has nothing to do with Prince Rupert from the North. His eyes are grey and his skin is too pale.  _ With a face like that who needs the Moon?  _ Emma hears the words in Regina's voice and manages a true smile. 

 

“Lovely day, isn’t it Princess Emma?” He is polite to a fault, carefully sipping his tea in a way she hasn’t quite mastered. “But it won’t be much longer until you see snow.” 

 

“It will be a week more, I think.” She replies tracing the edge of saucer and hears the Prince sigh. 

 

“I personally detest the thing,” He is smiling when she looks up at him. “There is too much of it in my kingdom. The whole castle smells of coal when it gets to be ten inches.”  

 

Emma keeps her laugh small and barely shakes her head, eyes are on her after all. She is the Princess and her eighteenth birthday had come and gone. 

 

“Would you mind terribly if I sent the servers away, Your Highness?” Even with such a request his voice never wanders into the rude. 

 

“Uh no. No, I don’t mind it.” Emma blinks in surprise forgetting her place. “Your Highness.” 

 

“Great! If you could all please leave the room!” Prince Rupert claps his hands once and the servers barely have a chance to exchange looks of confusion before a guard is opening a door for them. “It’s much better like this, isn’t it?” 

 

“If you think so.” She replies not knowing what to make him. Emma examines him again and his bright green of his coat contrasting with the bright red of his hair. The frills of his shirt are delicate, nothing like other noblemen would dare to wear. 

 

“Did the Queen tell you what this afternoon tea was about?” He drums his fingers on the table and his face is wearing an odd sort of sympathy. 

 

“It’s a promise I made her some months ago.” Emma catches the blur of her reflection on her untouched tea. “Just that.” 

 

“Was it? It seems we have very different ideas as to what today is,”  The drumming continues. “My father told me we were to be acquintanted before I proposed. Something about the joining our kingdoms.” 

 

“What?!” She exclaims dumbfounded and unable to keep her manners when shaken. 

 

“Not to worry.” He grins but her mind is too busy reeling to return the gesture. “I will tell father you showed no interest in me.” 

 

“You aren’t wrong there.” She points out unable to stop herself as she weighs his words. “Why would you do that?” 

 

“I never wish to be married,” Prince Rupert answers with the first sign of wistfulness on his expression. “Let alone to you, Princess Emma.” 

 

Emma knows her words need to be chosen carefully, her mask might have slipped but she has temper her reaction. She takes the first sip of her tea and grimaces. 

 

“You are a girl unhappily in love, Your Highness.” He tells her with eyes that have managed to see too much. 

 

“What makes you say that?” She tries to keep her voice from breaking. 

 

“Someone happily in love? They burn their tongue on scalding hot tea.” He smiles once more but she recognizes the sadness in it. “Someone unhappily in love lets their tea turn cold.” 

 

“I...thank you.” Emma manages to say after swallowing her tears with the rest of her tea. 

 

Prince Rupert stands up and extends his hand to her, like he would to a Prince. 

 

“Here’s to never seeing each other again.” 

 

Her laugh is genuine as she shakes his hand. 

 

* * *

 

Her skirts are heavy as she picks them up, white to match her mother’s. It’s the first pick of strawberries and the sky is not threatening any rain at all. Emma feels her ankle bend for no good reason and her father chuckles. 

 

“I told your mom you’d trip over that thing.” He says steadying her. 

 

“Next time, talk her out of it.” Emma replies barely registering all the green of the field.

 

“I promise I’ll try.” Her father shields his eyes from the Spring sun. “But you know your mother once she has made up her mind.”

 

She nods watching her walk ahead with flowers in her hair and hearing the changing songs of the birds all around her. Emma wonders how is that they ended up here even if she knows the tale. A prince and princess finding each other in the woods, a sword and bow for them both. But it’s not the whole truth, Emma knows that. It’s not something they speak about and every day is now like pulling threads on too many veils. 

 

“Did you ever do this before mom?” She asks squinting under the sunlight. 

 

“Do what, sprout?” 

 

“The first pick of strawberries,” Emma points at the whole party gathered for the occasion. “Make a day out of it.” 

 

He laughs again, a little harder this time. He shakes his head and squeezes her arm like in that way that is only his. 

 

“No,” Her father hesitates but seems to make up his mind. “I was too busy looking after sheep.” 

 

“Sheep?”

 

“I was a shepherd boy.” There isn’t an ounce of shame in his voice. “My mother worked in the castle and I looked after sheep in the fields.”

 

Emma looks at him and sees him as boy running after lambs and scraping his knees on hard rock. It’s so easy to picture him with tanned skin and easy laughter. She wants to know if it was anything like being a stable hand, if he misses the fires and sleeping in hay. If his cloak is too heavy on his shoulders and if he longs for something different. If he feels incomplete too. 

 

“Dad,” It takes all her effort to keep her voice steady. “Do you...do you miss it?” 

 

“Sometimes. It’s usually when I'm around too many lords.” He turns his gaze to her mother and Emma knows not to ask for more. He gained much more than he lost, that’s what he will say. That’s what she would say too, if she had made it past the woods that day. 

 

“I think we found our first strawberries!” Her mother says with her cheeks already pink from the day. She is smiling like she always is and Emma questions whether is possible to feel happiness in all that she does. 

 

“Come on, duty calls.” He says fondly and she is caught up in the warmth of their shared gaze.

 

Emma watches her mother close her eyes to he kiss her father presses to her cheek and her heart races. She doesn’t understand it or why her mother’s touch to her back makes her shiver like it never has before. Her heart still pounds as she cuts fruit from its stem, it feels like it will break through her chest when her mother kisses her brow. She wishes she could be that girl in her reflection, just for today. Wishes she knew how braid flowers into her hair and not trip over her skirts. Maybe that person would know what to do about her mother’s searching eyes. 

 

“This will go great with some cream, don’t you think sweetheart?” She asks her gently, holding up her basket so that she can see. 

 

“Yeah,” Emma picks a strawberry and bites into it. She figures she has to try, she owes her mother that much. “They’re good like this too.” 

 

“I’m glad.” Her mother locks her arm with hers and leads them down to where they have set a country table. “I’m also glad we get to spend this time together. It feels like it’s been a while.” 

 

“It does,” Emma is more careful with her skirts now. “I’m glad too.” 

 

“Oh Emma,” She stops and grabs her chin. “I blinked and you became a woman.” 

 

Emma says nothing and gives her the look she hopes to see. Her heart still races because she remembers when she was just a girl not too long ago. Just the same as another girl with dark eyes and dark hair. Who somehow learned how to survive this. The hollowness from her missing piece hits her like cold water. 

 

“Guess I did.” She tells her quietly seeing the shine in her eyes. It makes her mother look younger than she is.

 

Maybe that is what Regina saw every time too. The shine in the eyes of someone who expects some unnamed thing from her, who doesn’t demand because she does not need to. 

 

* * *

 

Time moves faster now, Emma is sure of it. Spring had become Summer before she could have wondered which flowers would bloom in a spot hidden away from the world. Days had blurred together, she supposes, in a haze of color she had not had the spirit to see. It’s the emptiness, Emma knows that. It can't be filled with anything around her. Especially not in a Summer night when the air smells of strawberries and the night is orange with torches lighting the way again. It's the yearly retelling of her mother's victory and she is aware there is nowhere to run. She had gone into maze hoping she could claim to have gotten lost but she had found the way out in no time. 

 

“Your Highness,” It isn't Mulan that has come to fetch her. “The play is about to begin.” The guard bows and waits for Emma to lead the way. 

 

She feels eyes watching her again as she walks, Emma doesn't remember what she looks like. Doesn't know how her hair was fixed this afternoon, doesn't bother to look down at her dress. It's a good thing, she decides. It's good that she can focus on the sweat on her back and on the pebbles making up the trail. If she keeps it up she will hardly watch the play, the smoke and lights will just be a flash happening in the background. 

 

“Right on time.” Her father greets her as she takes her seat next to his. 

 

“And so it is, Princess Snow White will take a bite from my poisoned apple and fall into a sleep like death!” Says a raspy voice from behind them.  The emptiness threatens to swallow her whole as the words ring out through the gardens. 

 

There are some laughs here and there and the sounds of children clinging to their mothers and Emma has failed already, letting her attention wander to her. She sees the actress dressed in black and her skin painted darker, sees the wrinkles drawn on her forehead and her stomach feels cold. Emma can’t close her eyes, it’s like she exists in two places at once. She is being torn apart thread by thread. 

 

_ “Aren’t you a clever one?” She’d said not quite glaring at her. Emma hadn’t believed it then, she hadn’t believed when the guards had called Your Majesty. So she had stood there, dumbstruck, barely being able to breathe. Unable to look away from Regina, from the glow of her skin and her dark hair. It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be.  _

 

_ A girl, a girl. Just a girl surrounded by guards and with strands of hair coming undone from her braid. The Queen, the one who gets stories told about her cruelty and darkness. The one who people claimed had wanted the crown from the beginning. The Queen Henry misses, the last of his people. Just a girl who hesitates to accept a helping hand. The truth had cut her deep then and she had never ached for it more. A girl, a girl. Only a girl.  _

 

She’d been just a girl every morning after that too, not an illusion or a dream. She had worn boots and fought her smiles less and less every morning. Emma watches the Evil Queen limp in the play and remembers Regina racing her to their usual tree, strong steps on the ground. The smugness on her face when she’d won that had made her flush. There is a loud cackle just below the stage and she remembers grass tickling her skin one morning. 

 

_ “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,”  Regina had barely been able to say the words, breathing unevenly.  _

 

_ “Made you laugh, didn’t it?” Emma had yawned in the middle of it. “You know who-who.”  _

 

_ Regina had laughed against her shoulder then. “Maybe you would have been a better court jester than groom.”  _

 

_ “That was my best joke.”  _

 

_ “To the dungeons with you then.” _

 

Emma watches the Evil Queen climb on the stage, nearing the girl playing her mother and she feels sick. She wants it to stop, for the music to go quiet, for the lines she knows by heart know to never be said again. Emma looks at her father with the request dying before she can open her lips, his hands are on his knees and his gaze is fixed on his feet. She turns to her mother and her eyes are averted to the side and her fingers are tightly knotted together. Emma doesn’t know if this something they had always done, if they had always looked this ashamed, this guilty. She had never bothered to look away from the play before. 

 

“A girl so hard at work like yourself must be hungry,” A shudder shocks her skin as the line hangs in the air. It's enough to get her to stand up. 

 

“I don’t feel so well,” Emma whispers in apologies to her mother and father before ducking out of the place. 

 

Her feet begin to run and the pebbles crunch under her feet, it hurts. It hurts until she stops by a tree and hurls. Emma feels the burn in her throat and slips off her feet from her shoes and runs. Runs towards the palace, where the grass and dirt become marble and it’s cold under her toes. She knows of only one person who would not be at the celebration tonight. 

 

The door to the library feels heavier, maybe because she cannot remember when she had last opened it. 

 

“Henry?” She chokes out. 

 

There is no reply, the only she can hear is the end of the play outside. Two candles are lit in a corner, away from the window. Emma breathes in and walks towards it, not knowing what she needs. He sits by an armchair he had clearly moved away from the window, holding a yellowed piece of paper to his chest. 

 

“Henry?” Emma stops short of touching his shoulder.

 

“Alteza,” His eyes are brimming with tears as he looks up at her. “Forgive me, I wasn't…” Henry tries to smile for her sake and that is what finally breaks her. 

 

Emma begins to cry thinking she has no right to it. No right when he was sitting here alone with only memories of Regina and the daughter he lost. He rises to meet her, still barely taller than she is, and hugs her.  

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She repeats over as he pats her hair. His kindness envelops her like he has any idea why she truly cries. 

 

“It is not your fault.” He whispers and breaks the embrace. Henry thumbs away her tears. “Si?”

 

Emma cannot agree because she feels something is, something should be. He hands her his handkerchief. Henry looks at her like he seeing a shadow, doing something he hasn’t done in so many years. 

 

“Why are you so good to me?” The question scratches her throat. 

 

“My daughter, she would have wanted it. I like to think, yes.” He sighs and he looks so much older now. “And you make it so easy.”

 

She blinks back her tears not knowing if there is anything that she could say to repay him.  “Mind if I stay?”

 

“ I would like that.” He gives her forearm a squeeze and points to an armchair still by the window. 

 

Sinking into the leather and hearing Henry’s whispers and tales about the Queen, candles, finely embroidered dresses and love poems that do not mean anything at all Emma dozes off. There are no dreams, no memories, only rest. She awakens her neck is stiff and the wax on the candles has nearly run out. A note rests on her hands, in long and thick script.

 

“Buenas noches, Alteza.” Emma folds it to can keep  under her mattress.

 

She takes one of the candles to light her way out and go back to her bed to try and wish for Regina in her dreams. 

 

“You have the King and Queen worried, you know?” Mulan says as she steps into the corridor. “I told them I knew where to find you.” 

 

Emma hang blows out the flame and hangs her head. “Where are they?” 

 

“Up in their chambers, pacing I suspect.”

 

“Right.” She begins to walk down the hall. “How did you know where to find me?” 

 

“I’m your best friend,” Mulan replies defensively. “Or at least I thought I was.” 

 

“You are.” Emma feels like she might be sick again.

 

“Then let me help you? I know something happened and you won’t say what it was but tell me how..?” 

 

The desperation in her voice makes her stomach clench because she had never considered Mulan at all. Hadn’t thought it was possible for her emptiness to spread out and infect others.

 

“Remember….remember what you asked me before we left the castle?” She wants to keep from shaking but it’s useless to try and fight it. 

 

Mulan is pensive, eyebrows meeting at the middle. “I asked you if you’d found what you were looking for.” 

 

“Yeah,” Her chest feels tight and her heart too big for it. “What if I did and just...left it there?” 

 

“Then we go and get it back.” Mulan says with as much determination as she’s ever heard, with it she feels the pull of her emptiness become a little weaker. 

* * *

 

The castle is unchanged, covered by the same wilderness. Regina’s heart still beats under its stone. It had cost Emma another set of promises, another set of lies to get here. It had taken time and many smiles but she and Mulan had managed to set out on their own. Her friend is waiting out in the courtyard with a fire and a tent issued to the royal guards alone. She had not asked what is it that Emma needs to find and there is yet another person she does not know how to repay for their kindness.  _ Be careful in there, Emma,  _ it's all she had asked from her. 

 

“I come in peace.” Emma she mutters as she steps over the bewitched vines that cover the floor. 

 

She walks past the mirrors again, this time there is only one of her staring back. Whatever magic that had allowed her to see the other two is gone. She is alone inside a cursed place, dressed in the pants and the boots she had lost worn inside these walls. Emma doesn’t know who this is meant to be, if she is anyone at all. Her hands form nervous fists in line with the pulse that beats in her ears as the wood under her creaks. There is no creature in the dark, no deals or words of warning but she has to go on. Emma coughs out the dust she had breathed in stepping into the gallery, it’s the loneliest of sounds. The same torn portrait is looking back at her, behind the flame of her torch. Still just as ruined as it had been a year ago, unchanged and unmoved. Feeling the absolute stillness of the castle Emma doubts her own memories, maybe it had all been a very long dream. Maybe there had been no magic to push her into the past not even children believe that to be possible. No, stories about falling in love with a Queen were made up to keep hope where there is none. She's a Princess, what claim does she have to hope? 

  
  


“Please,” It breaks through the silence of the room. “Please, let me go back.” 

 

She waits a beat, two or even a hundred and the room remains the same. 

 

“Well, shit.” Emma runs a trembling hand through her hair before turning on her heel. 

 

But then the room sinks and twist, time pulls at her bones. The dark and the pain of stretched out through time and this time she does not cry out in pain. How could she?  Where she lands is green and sounds like the busy bustle of people. There is flowing water somewhere and the Sun is strong on her skin. Someone bumps into her shoulder as she finds her footing.

 

“Hey!” She rubs her arm feeling Emma Swan’s instincts already surfacing. 

 

“If you not helping, least get out of the way!” A man carrying a carpet complains. “Royal family is a half day away and this place ain't close to being finished!” 

 

Emma raises her eyes and her breath catches at the sight of it. Her mother's palace. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line about someone happily in love/someone happily in love is taken and adapted from Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina; " A woman happily in love, she burns the soufflé. A woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on the oven."
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been the worst about updating I'm so sorry! Truthfully I think updates won't have a set time and will come when I finish them so apologies for being so inconsistent.

It was only when she became Queen that Regina had begun telling time through changing seasons. Summer had locked her in marriage, Autumn had seen her lying in the grass with a stable girl, smiling and forgetting about her crown. She had learned to burn in the cold of Winter and Spring had reminded her of who she had once been. Regina hadn’t cared for blooming colors and fresh showers then, obsessed with spells and prayers. Sometimes she had whispered one after the other foolishly hoping it would get her to Emma. Regina had splayed her hands over maps speaking words of every true language begging anything bigger than herself to drag her fingers towards the place where she might be. There had  only ever been two answers to the purple magic that stemmed from her fingertips late a night; the castle and a place beyond the mountains. Whenever she’d dared to venture deeper into the woods and every day there’d been a bird that watched her too intently, every day she’d felt the cloak of her mother’s magic grow in size. She’d taken to lighting her hands on fire while taking a bath, getting lost in the flames. How they still burned bright under the water. It hadn’t been enough, of course. Not when she still dreams of a wood burning stove, blonde hair and an unmade bed.

 

“We’re finally going!” Snow had exclaimed one afternoon, holding a letter with the King’s seal on it. “So many gardens! Father tells me he had a maze built just for me!

 

Regina had understood then that the Princess had wrongly assumed that the details of her own life are always shared with her. She has just as much control of the wind as she does of them.

 

“That’s wonderful, dear.” It had felt like her smile had been etched out from her then.

 

Regina had watched her handmaidens pack her Summer clothes, dresses too heavy for the heat going into trunks. Nothing like the white cotton and multi-colored sashes from her childhood. Only one of her maids was allowed to go with her and it had been Ruth who had volunteered with a certain sort of sadness in her expression.

 

“Are you leaving anyone behind, Ruth?” She had asked as she dressed her this morning.

 

“Not anymore, Your Majesty.” Her lips had made one tight line and Regina had recognized the subtle break in her voice.

 

She watches her now in the carriage and wonders who it is she lost. Ruth’s eyes grow wide and her fingers grab at the grey of her skirts making Regina look out the window. It’s the farthest Ruth has ever been from home, she understands. It isn’t until she notices the thick of the woods being left behind and her mother’s magic slowly weakening that she realizes where she is going. Regina summons the lines of her secret maps to her thoughts, remembers where her fingers had been guided to and dares to hope. Dares to hope that her magic and prayers had not been wrong.

 

* * *

 

It takes them three days to leave the confines of what Regina had known to be the kingdom. The Kingsway circles mountains and neared cliffs, for royal carriages cannot cross in between the trees or cut through the thick of the woods. Regina cannot help but think watching the forest line thinning that an escape would have been quick, a couple of days and they would have thought the Queen lost. At least it’s a lie she tells herself to deepen her wound, that there had once been an easy escape with Emma and something had robbed her of it. Perhaps, she thinks, nearing the valley where the palace is, it will be returned with it. She should know better than to feed this fire but she still has yet to learn how to extinguish hope all together.

 

“Your Majesty, look!” Ruth whispers pointing to her right. “The Royal Palace!”

 

The Sun reflects seems to dance on the roofs, above the marble, golden as far as her eyes can see. It’s pure gold crafted to look like leaves over each window arch, designed to elicit gasps of submission from everyone who sets their sight on it.  But Regina sees fire and hammers, a blacksmith’s sullied pale hands and the mountains she remembers having been named after gold. She remembers old stories of necklaces splayed over brown skin, her father’s voice saying oro amarillo como el elote. Regina shuts her eyes and locks her fingers together so that no sparks come from the rush in her blood.

 

“The King must be so proud.” She says through her teeth.

 

Regina misses the pebbled road and the manicured gardens and he flowers Snow had promised. There is no use when they will be inescapable in afternoon teas, endless games she was forced to learn and the Princess’s eager clap to the delights of songmakers and performers. There is no point in trying to think of this place beautiful. It’s only when the horses’ hooves have stopped clicking that she opens her eyes. A guard is quick to open the door for her while another announces her arrival.

 

“Her Majesty, Queen Regina!” Is all he says, no other title or name. She supposes it hardly matters.

 

A woman with a thin frame in a green dress comes rushing towards her, in between the two lines of people ready to bow as she commences her walk.

 

“Your Majesty!” She curtsies. “Welcome to the palace! We are so glad you were only a day behind The King and Princess!”

 

“A true blessing, Lady.” Regina replies with just the right amount of looseness on her lips to feign interest. “Is this the palace staff?”

 

“Yes, yes! We handpicked only the best to tend to the Royal Family’s needs.” The words sit bitterly in Regina’s mouth as she hears them.

 

The woman can hardly contain her excitement as they begin their walk down the aisle created by people. They all bow, avoid her gaze like every other person in the castle. Like they have been instructed to. Regina contains the urge to sigh already feeling Summer making her dress heavier. This march will be over in a few seconds and she can begin dreading what comes next then, but she can at least savor these few seconds where it’s not bad as it can be.

 

Ruth coughs loudly as she trails behind her. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. The journey was a bit too much excitement for me.” She says in way of apology but her eyes direct Regina to her left, indicating it had been a diversion. Regina follows her gaze until she finds blonde hair and green eyes that never learned to follow instructions. Emma Swan, manifesting out of thin air again. Looking at her, with a feeble and watery smile. All Regina can do is fail to reign her gasp and stumble into Ruth’s arms.

 

“Your Majesty, are you alright?!” The lady in green asks her, hands short from touching.

Emma looks like she is about to move herself, ready to lend her hand to hers.

 

“I think…” She replies suddenly out of breath with a heart that beats too hard. “I think..that maybe the journey was also too much excitement for me.”

 

Idiot, stable girl has the gall to look amused under her poorly hidden concern.

 

Regina cannot bring herself to rip her eyes from Emma’s, not until hands escort her inside the palace.

 

* * *

 

The day comes through the windows is bright and there is a breeze and Regina knows it’s meant to make any one person walking on marble floors feel like they are touched by the Sun as opposed to burned by it. A privilege to be here in the shade, looking at Summer blue and green while it is being finely tended to outside by rough and hardened hands. Had Emma’s hands been here, laying down pebbles, shoveling dirt and cutting herself on rose bushes?

 

_“But do you know where she is?” Regina had asked him. She’d learned his name but had not liked the way his eyes turned a darker shade of yellow when she used it._

 

_“Will there be a day you ask a different question, dearie?” He’d replied._

 

_“When you give me an answer other than ‘in a land far, far away.” Her arms had crossed themselves on her chest, trusting that his magic shielded her from mother’s._

 

_“Ah, well. These will be long days ahead of us.” He’d laughed and blinked away from her. “Think of ways to grow up instead of out.”_

 

_“Is that supposed to mean anything?” Regina had asked feeling the blood rushing to her face. She’d known then that she hates him. Hates him but needs him. For Emma and everything that comes with her._

 

_“If you live on dreams alone, you will die at the hand of reality.” His teeth had looked sharper as he smiled, savouring his next words. “ Better to sharpen your claws, Your Majesty.”_

 

Regina is bombarded with colors that aren’t too unlike those of the castles but are also a pale mimicry of others she knows as if they were her own skin. The fountains outside and the polished mirrors and perfectly sculpted faces do not scream that this is a land far, far away. Nothing about it does, not how long it took the royal carriage to arrive, not the complexion of everyone who surrounds her. And yet, this had been the answer to her question. What she cast spells for, whose face she saw after prayers every night and every morning. She doesn’t let herself believe it, not when the puzzle had been too easily solved. Handed to her as she walked, not when she could have missed it. Missed Emma.

 

“Regina!” Comes Snow’s voice at the end of the hall and then the click of her shoes. Grace comes easily to her, even as she runs. Like she had never been schooled, mother would call it nature. But she reserves her bitterness for the King following behind his daughter, his regard for her is obvious. It’s one an old man reserves for a trunk, one packed with things he might want some nights and wonders why everything else was not discarded. Regina knows, has always known.

 

As the Princess hugs her waist, she bows. “My King.” Letting the venom of her words sink into herself instead of being spat out in his face.

 

“Regina.” He doesn’t even attempt a smile. “I trust your journey went as expected?”

 

“Yes, Your Majesty. Thank you.”

 

“Good. Lady Thomas will guide you through the workings of the palace. You’ve already met her.” He tells her and she has to wonder if she is the only one to recognize the threat in his words. “I trust her completely.”

 

“Of course.” Regina barely turns her face to him, her face still molded into submission. Magic pricking at her fingertips.

 

“It’s going to be spectacular now that you’re here! Have they shown you golden fountain yet? Or of the birds daddy had brought from all over?!” Snow looks up at her, her breath in her chest.

 

“I have not had the pleasure, Your Highness. I was hoping you could show you me.” Regina throws a glance at King Leopold and sees his satisfied nod. And just like that, her day has been taken from her.

 

“I’ll leave you to it.” His demeanor changes as he places a hand on Snow’s chin. “I have boring kingly matters to attend. You have fun.”

 

It’s obvious there will not be one minute in which she will be free to search a misplaced stable hand from far, far away.

 

* * *

 

 

“The whole court is to arrive as the days progress.” Lady Thomas informs her as Snow picks flowers to adorn her room. “But you knew that, I’m sure.” She is uncertain of what her tone implies but Regina knows better than to betray her ignorance.

 

“Yes.” She says shortly. “What I have not been told is how long the palace will be hosting them, Lady Thomas.”

 

“The whole season, Your Majesty.” She chuckles modestly. “My orders were that linen is only to cover the furniture until leaves begin to change color.”

 

“How…” Regina struggles to find the words. “Delightful.”

 

“I do hope so, Your Majesty!”She claps her hands together and she has to wonder whether that is customary to people of this kingdom. “We prepared endlessly for the festivities.”

 

“Festivities?” She asks still watching Snow, cheeks already reddening under the Sun.

 

“I apologize, Your Majesty,” Lady Thomas’s voice has that particular tone every noble takes when they remember from where in their maps she was taken . “I’d forgotten that your customs...are different. You’ll learn in no time.”

 

“I’m sure, Lady.”  

 

“I also must have your approval for staff arrangements.” Regina could smile, wondering if this what her mother had envisioned when she named her. Looking after a girl barely younger than she is and running a man’s house. “Given the size of the palace I thought it’d be best if Her Royal Highness had a maiden in her quarters during the night. The same would apply to you, Your Majesty. For any needs that might arise at a late hour.”

 

Regina turns her eyes on her. She is eager to please, even now at her age. A lady of modest range still hoping to improve her title. Marry off a daughter to a lord with more land, perhaps. She looks at her as she smiles completely unaware what she has gifted Regina.

 

“Do you already have someone in mind, Lady Thomas?”

 

“I thought I would leave that to Your Majesty’s discretion.”

 

Suddenly all she can think of is of early mornings, whispers and her fingers tangled in thick blonde hair. Autumn.

* * *

 

 

Ruth is unpinning her hair, carefully oiling her temples where her skin gets dry. She hums something that feels distantly hers. Regina has never dared ask about it but knows it’s a sign of her contentment.

 

“I take you had a good day, Ruth.”  She says carefully

 

“I did. As any I could have had, Your Majesty.” Ruth barely smiles but the corners of her eyes always crinkle when she means to. “This palace is truly something. Never in my life did I expect to see so much. I don’t know how to thank Your Majesty for…”

 

“There is nothing to thank me for.” Regina tells her failing to keep the disappointment from her voice. After all, had not been for Ruth she might have never laid eyes on her stable girl.

 

“Then I suppose Your Majesty would not accept an old maiden’s token gratitude.” Her voice is so steady and her fingers still so careful that Regina almost misses her slyness.

 

“I could. Try me again.”

 

Ruth blows air through her nose, the closest she’s come to a laugh since Regina has known her.

 

“I searched the palace staff like you instructed me,” She lays a curl on her shoulder. “Carefully. For someone who could be trusted to sleep in your quarters. It was quite the task, Your Majesty.”   

 

“Did you find someone?”  

 

“Most girls are to Lady Thomas’s liking, I think.” She takes a deep breath. “ But there is one, Your Majesty. Some Swan girl.”

 

“What about her?” Her heart hammers against her and she can’t stop her smile. Or her eyes clouding with an ache that is finally out in the open.

 

“Completely the wrong fit, for handmaiden if you ask me. She will drop wine on Your Majesty. Just you wait.”  

 

“So, should we get rid of her?”

 

“No, Your Majesty.” Ruth pauses to gaze at Regina through the mirror. And she can’t help but think that this what everyone else means when they say mother. “She’s clumsy and more suited to dirt and hay. But there’s a good heart there.”  

 

“How can you tell?” She wants to know if it’s as obvious to her as it is to Regina. Even after the seasons had changed and she with them.

 

“Something about her eyes,” It’s only when her lips truly part that Regina knows the woman has forgotten herself. “Reminds me of my boy.”

 

She waits a beat until Ruth decides if this is something she wanted told, she waits until she recognizes that pain in her expression.

 

“Where is she now?”  There are only small mercies she is allowed to bestow with the crown she carries and this one of them.

 

“Waiting to be called in, Your Majesty.”  

 

The last strand of her hair uncurls on her shoulders and Regina should have learned to contain herself. To press herself together, to keep any sort of happiness away from her eyes.

 

“Should I bring her in?”

 

“Yes.” She replies with a  hand over lips to save some face.

 

Ruth nods and Regina watches her go until the bedroom door has swallowed. She listens for steps that walk past the Queen’s sitting room and open another door to the hallway. There a few hundred steps between them, this she knows because she hasn’t breathed since the first. A creak of wood and hushed voices that still manage to cut through the silence of the night.

 

“Go in, Her Majesty is expecting you.”

 

“I..but.”

 

“In. Before she picks another for the honor.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Lie down in peace, Your Majesty.” Ruth tells her beyond the door.  And she smiles, smiles with so much gratitude.

 

Emma shuffles in with a wary look on her face. Regina follows the lines of her face loosen until she spots her in the mirror. Brittle green eyes that look at her like she is a sort of miracle.

 

“Hi.”  She breathes out.

 

Regina turns to face her, to take in the shrug of her shoulders and a sheepish smile. “Is that really the first thing you have to say to me?”

 

“Yeah?” Her head cocks to her side out of practice in whatever game they’d grown accustomed to playing.

 

The cold stone of the floor shocks her as she walks on her bare feet to reach her. Emma blinks in confusion until Regina cups her cheek. She leans into her touch then and Regina feels her knees buckle and Emma’s hands on her waist.

 

“That’s the second time today.” It was meant to sound light, barely a tease. But it comes out heavy, too heavy.

 

“Oh, you absolute _moron._ ” She can feel herself cry when she presses her lips to hers.

 

Emma’s arms wrap themselves around her. It’s the first time she’s been held in a long time, the first time they’ve allowed each other to do it like this. The kiss breaks with that realization and not even her lost stable hand is strong enough to keep them standing. They slide down to the floor, grasps tight on the other. Faces buried in shoulders and cries that can’t make themselves into words. It is not about skin and pulsating blood, not when they are folding into each other. But her fingers find the nooks of Emma, feel her bones to be sharper under her touch. Regina untangles her head from their knotted mess to examine her. Ashen grey under her eyes, slimmer cheeks and pale lips.

 

“Where have you been?” She asks her seeing her concern mirrored in Emma. “What happened to you?”  

 

“I’ve been away.” Emma replies with a tremble.

 

Regina searches her expression hoping it will reveal something. All there is evidence of small wounds that have yet to heal and she can only guess as to what they are. She pulls her up and leads them both to her bed, newly freshened with lavender.

 

“Sit.” Emma gives her a dubious look. “I do mean it.”

 

She tries to smile, Regina can tell, but she is lost in the details that make her room. Like she is in a half remembered dream. Her hands are closed around the fabric of her trousers and it is a clear tell that she is trying to hide them. Her boots look just as worn as they had in the Autumn, the white dust of limestone making every crack in their leather visible. Regina kneels to unlace them but Emma moves away too quickly.

 

“No, Regina..you don’t have to. Please”  She begs as if she wore the crown instead.

 

“I want to.” Regina replies defiantly knowing her brow is furrowed. “Besides, I’ve always been curious about these boots of yours.”

 

“Yeah, why?” Emma swallows something down as their eyes meet when Regina slips off the first one.

 

“They are exactly like mine.” Her thumbs press down on the tip and find they it indeed does not budge. “Silver tipped.”

 

“They were a gift from an old man.” Emma is decidedly torn looking down at her. “I think he felt sorry for me.”  

 

“Is that what you think this is?” She asks tossing away the second boot and coming to stand in between her legs. “Me feeling sorry for you?”

 

She is quiet in her reply, her gaze shifting away from her. Regina brings her back. “Well, I don’t. So stop this nonsense.”  

 

“I…” Emma closes her eyes as she breathes in. “I missed you so much...I couldn’t..I” Whatever has happened to her, wherever she has been, begins to flow out of her in more tears. And as much she needs answers from her all Regina thinks to do is kiss her. Kiss her as they sink into clean sheets and she is drunk on what she hasn’t had in months. She loves her, but Regina does not wish she could get the words out. Not when there are lost hopes of fires and cottages away from the world. Emma tries to make her lie on her back but ends up hitting her knee to her stomach.

 

“Regina! Are you..?!” Emma pushes herself off her, as anxious as she’s even her seen her. “Can you breathe?”

 

“ _Fuck._ ” She clutches at her stomach just before she lets out a painful laugh. It does its trick, making her idiot stable girl sigh in relief and throw herself next to her.

 

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you curse.”

 

“I’d never taken a knee to the gut before.” Regina slaps Emma’s own belly with the back of her hand.

 

“Ow!”

 

“Serves you right.” Her muscles still resent any breathing but nothing is worth it more. “Barbarian.”

 

They begin to laugh and don’t even stop Regina’s forehead finds Emma’s shoulder. But it the sounds begin to dry out in her throat when she lifts stretches Emma’s arms above her and touches her hands to hers. She feels fresh cuts, cuts that can only be made on soft skin. Not on thick, calloused hands. .

 

“Where have you been?” Regina asks again. “And don’t say far away. Why...why weren’t you there?”

 

Emma presses her lips together, as if something is forcing her to keep quiet.

 

“I don’t think I can explain.”

 

Regina retreats, sitting on Emma’s thighs. “I think you owe to me to at least try.”

 

She nods gravely and shamefully. “I know. I...I didn’t go. Last thing I remember is thinking there was no point in unlacing my boots before bed and then..I was taken.”

 

“Taken?” Her voice shakes with the possibilities of the word. “By who?!”

 

“Magic.” It’s a confession forced out of some powerful restraint, the shallowness of her breaths are enough indication of it. “Magic brought me to the castle and it took me away.”

 

Regina closes her eyes to feel for it, for any of it that might be running through her. For anything familiar, anything that is taunting her. Anything willing and capable of hurting her and she finds nothing. Yellow eyes and sharp teeth come to mind, he’d known in the way only someone responsible would know.

 

“Did you make a deal for it?”

 

Her eyes grow wide and her fear is almost palpable underneath her. Emma is only capable of nodding.

 

“What did you ask from him? Regina cannot bring herself to stop her questions.

 

“I…” Emma reaches for her hands as she sits up. “I think I wanted to be free.” She just realized it, it’s obvious by the way she traces her knuckles. “It comes with a price each time.”

 

“What is it?” Regina turns her hands in hers and looks at the open and burned red on them.

 

“It decides when to take me away from you.”

 

She scowls because nothing could truly be hers, never theirs. It's how the universe has been designed around her, just a series of strings to be pulled. With so many fighting as to how gets to hold the strings in their grasp. Regina decides that this doesn’t get to be some grand design around them, they don’t get to be pulled apart on a whim. She calls her magic forward to the tip of her fingers, purple and deep and lays it over Emma’s hands. It closes every cut, no matter how deep. Emma raises her eyes to her with a question just about to be born from her lips.

 

“You’re not the only one who made a deal.”  

 

* * *

 

The Summer air gets thicker as her reputation for a pampered Queen begin to spread, Regina is aware. She knows that the ladies of the court fan themselves with gossip they’ve heard from their own maidens. _It’s what the heat does to her people, I’ve heard. Long for bed the entire day._ That had been a whisper that had reached her ears as two different ladies curtsied. All because the Queen likes to retire to her chambers as soon as dusk hits the land.

 

“You could poison them.” Emma had joked one night with eyes half closed.

 

“That’s ineffective,” Regina had her fingers around her hair. “You’d want nobles to know it was you who did it.”

 

She’d snorted into her shift. “Why?”  

 

“You’d want to be feared.” She’d laughed with traces of something heavy and sour dragging on her words.

 

Despite the long line of whispers that follows her Regina changes nothing, the Sun sets in the evening and she excuses herself. Sometimes there is a nod to a lady, a hand on Snow’s cheek and promises for the next day. Promises to pose for a portrait or for playing at being a milk maid with a princess too old for such games of fancy. Summer days are always longer and she is just as wary of dawn as she had been in Autumn. New light means means Emma tiptoeing over wood to be found at her own bed were someone to walk in and rouse her.

 

“What do you do all day?” Regina asks watching her undress out of her grey dress.

 

“Miss the stables for one.” Emma mumbles untying her hair from the tight chignon forced on her by Lady Thomas.

 

“That could be arranged,” She teases and is pleased to see Emma hesitate for a second. “Sleep at the quarters with the rest of..”

 

“I don’t miss them at all.” They are both smiling, it’s gotten easy to tell under candle light.

 

“So you spend your days pinning for me.”  

 

“Maybe.” Emma crawls under the sheets and waits for Regina to join.

 

It takes only a moment to remember, seeing her with her disheveled hair and cautious smile that she could vanish. That Emma kisses her temple every night and every morning after heard whisper her prayers to let her know that she is still here. That there might be a day that her bed will be empty. She slides into bed, already weary at the thought as her head hits a feathered pillow.

 

“It won’t always be like this.” Regina had wanted it to come out as promise, firm and certain. But she wavers, even as she gazes at Emma. “We’ll find an answer.”

 

“Yeah.”  She says before kissing her. “Besides, we’ve got bigger problems than that.” Emma has that look to her, of someone carefully painting over damage.

 

“Like what?”

 

“What you’ll be wearing to the Summer festivities.” Emma can barely contain her amusement.

 

“ _Stop._ ”

 

“Lady Thomas gave me a three hour explanation…" 

 

“So that’s what you do with your days...” Regina throws an errant pillow at her. “Plot my demise.”  

 

“And I still don’t know the difference between turquoise and cerulean.” Emma rolls closer to her and kisses her neck.

 

“If I look ridiculous to the entire court by wearing the wrong shade of blue I really will send you back the stables.”

 

“Mhmm.”  

 

Regina lets herself melt into her touch and it becomes easy to believe that their lives are truly so simple.

 

* * *

 

She does not end wearing the wrong shade of blue to the first of the festivities. It matches the Princess’s dress perfectly and it makes Regina wonder what the previous Queen would have looked like. Lady Thomas told her this color had been chosen because of the deep blue of her eyes and it had remained tradition since that first Summer. Queen Eva was a happy Queen, she is told, her daughter’s hand always in hers. Fair skin that became rosy during this time, she made the King smile. All this she is told as layers of cotton are piled on her, as her back is being laced with silk. Regina supposes that whatever Queen Eva saw in the mirror before stepping out for the day was nothing like her.

 

“Today is my favorite!” Snow announces set on taking her hand and swinging it. “We get to have a play put on for us! I’m sad you missed it last year but you are going to love it! I just know!”

 

“That sounds exciting,” Regina replies with her practiced ease. “What is it about?”

 

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise!” Snow says with a grin.

 

Drums, drums that sound too much like war drums begin to play and the air smells of strawberries. The Royal Guard is everywhere in the gardens, songs are sung about their valor and there are displays of different formations throughout the day and a vague feeling of fear begins to pool at the pit of her stomach.

 

By the time Summer has made the sky pink and her skirts are spread over her seat in front of a stage Regina feels terror pulsating through her, loud and clear. There is canon fire but it is not that makes her jump, it’s seeing a crest she recognizes on stage. Her grandfather’s and her father’s, a torn flag of red, blue and white.

 

“Once upon a time in the kingdom far beyond our mountains, where the Sun burns hotter…” Begins a man’s voice. It’s the last thing Regina hears, not the chants of mock soldiers, not a King’s rallying speech, not the cries made to sound cowardly of a bare chested man with his skin painted brown and feathers in his hair, not the supplications of a Queen with wig curled to look like her own hair in the mornings. Not the clapping over the crest of the house of White being planted on stage. Regina feels like pure ash inside, that if she were to be touched she would crumble to the ground. She has to find the strength to rise from her chair and keep her gaze away from the lords and ladies.

 

“How did you like it?” Comes Snow with a bit of cream on her lips.

 

Regina prays for someone else to take over, something else. Something that strings the words from out of her and then there is a voice. Her own but deeper.

 

“It was perfect.” She hears it say.

 

“Oh, I’m so glad!”

 

Magic begins to brew somewhere deep inside wanting to hurt, just like she had wished that morning at the forest.

 

“Your Majesty, Your Highness.” Ruth appears almost out breath at her side. “Forgive the intrusion but I believe a lady has requested to see you, Your Majesty.”

 

The strings of her magic retreat somewhat as she understands her meaning.

 

“Of course,” The depth of her voice isn’t gone yet, not when she still needs a shield. “I’d forgotten, Lady Maurier had asked for this audience not three days ago. Forgive me, dear.”

 

Snow might have nodded but she misses it entirely as Ruth leads her to a pond devoid of people.

 

“Breathe, Your Majesty.” Ruth says quietly while her hand hovers over her. “You’re safe here.”  

 

Emma appears from behind a tree and hurries to meet her. She mouths her thanks to Ruth before lacing her fingers with hers. Tentative, as if she were still asking for permission. Regina lets herself go in her arms, buries her nose in her neck.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She whispers over and over again as if had been her up on that stage. The tears cannot be helped at this point. It feels like Emma’s arms hold her for longer than they should.

 

“We should go. Someone could see.” Her voice is fragile now.

 

“No one will find us.”

 

Regina breaks out of her embrace to find an odd sort of pride in her face. She narrows her eyes, demanding an explanation.

 

“I know this place better than anyone.” Emma thumbs the small hairs on her arms. “Gardens, passages. Even the maze.”

 

“Is _this_ how you spend your days?” She wants to tease but it comes out still too broken.

 

Emma shrugs and pulls her to a different end of the pond.

 

Regina shakes her head and smiles. She does it every day at stolen moments of the festivities that follow. She calls her a careless idiot for appearing at a passageway near the tea room where all the ladies were gathered to celebrate the day their ancestors brewed their first tea leaves. Emma suppresses a laugh with a kiss the evening knights celebrate the slaying of the first dragon as she comes from a secret stairwell. Soon enough there hasn’t been an unseen spot that has not seen them hide from the world. On the last of the festivities, as they watch fireworks go off from under the trees Regina remembers to be afraid. Afraid that this will end, of Emma being taken again. That the day is coming, that it will happen during this moment.

 

“What if I kept your heart?” She asks her lying a hand on her chest. “Could it still take you if I had it?”

 

“It didn’t stop it last time.” Emma tells her quietly. "All it did was make the days longer." 

 

“But I..” Regina says before understanding what she’d meant. Gold and red lights go off above them and it brings out the brown in Emma’s eyes.

 

They resign themselves to keep watching in silence, lying against each other.

 

* * *

 

 

“Rumplestiltskin!” Regina calls out his name with Emma’s hand tight around hers.

 

It is late and the moon is hidden by storm clouds. They are in another hidden corner of the palace grounds, a half hour walk away from the stables.

 

“I was wondering when you’d call dearie.” He says blinking into the dark. “And who might you be?” His eyes grow bright as he smiles.

 

“Don’t play games with us. I know you…” Regina looks at Emma because her grasp is only stronger now. She has grown pale, as if she had seen a ghost.

 

“Ah yes! I remember you now!” He snickers. “Said some things you shouldn’t have, didn’t you?”  

 

Emma remains silent and rooted next to her.

 

“Did you make a deal with her or not?”

 

His eyes shine and his fingers twitch as he looks past them. “That’s the wrong way to put it but maybe I did.” He cheers like he has won at something. “Have I not kept my bargain, dearie? Is this not what you wanted?”  

 

“Is this some sick joke to you?” Emma snaps at him.

 

“One you agreed to, mind you. _Stable girl_.” He giggles lie a child would, savoring his words. “What is that you want from me?”

 

“How do we stop magic from taking her?” Regina steps closer to him, fire ready to ignite.

 

“Ha! You can’t” He blinks farther away from them. “And I’d be careful who you threaten with your little sparks, Regina.”

 

“Tell us the truth.” Emma grits out.

 

“You already know it. Magic will always take you when it suits it unless…”

 

“Unless what?!” This time she can’t help the fire in the palm of her hand.

 

“You find a land without magic.”He waves at them already fading into the dark. “Til we meet again, Majesty.”

 

* * *

 

The last days of Summer, before linens begin to dropped on furniture, are spent studying whichever charts and maps that could be found. Emma’s fingers are delicate on paper, she mouths the words as if she is trying to remember them for when she is gone. Regina does not tell her about her spells, about her magic pointing to Emma being here when she brought it forward. She can’t share this piece of the puzzle she does not understand, the one she keeps deep within herself. To wonder and pull and pull at when everything has been hidden under the mattress, even after her prayers have been said. 

 

“Do you think he was telling us the truth?” She asks as Regina untangles the knots in her hair.

 

Regina sighs considering her answer. “He is a lot of things but he isn’t a liar. He enjoys it far too much.”

 

“I figured. Bastard.”  Her shoulders tense but she moves to ease them. “How do you even get to a land without magic anyway?”

 

“I don’t know,” Regina thinks of her mother who never lacked it in any land. Whose reach extended so far, eyes that always watched. “I’ve never heard of one.”

 

“Guess we’ll have to look.”  

 

“You make it sound so easy.” She tells her eyeing the mountain ranges, the rivers and seas on their bed. “A travelling Queen would raise more eyebrows than a lazy one.”

 

“I could do it  when...when I’m gone.” Emma suggests with that sadness that has begun clouding her eyes. “If you’ll still have me when I..”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous.” And she kisses her fearing that this the moment when she fades away from her, that this her way of saying her goodbyes. “I’ll always have you.”

 

Maps and charts crease underneath them and Regina’s fingers undo their own work as they tangle in Emma’s hair. Even here, there are no promises or declarations just strangled sounds and their own names permeating the air. And days later Regina is glad of it because it hadn’t been magic that separates them this time. It’s the orange of the leaves and the chill of the evenings that do it. Carriages are readied, trunks are packed and Regina has to watch Emma’s face dissolve into the crowd of people who stand at the palace gates.

 

She crumbles then, against her seat. Wondering when it will be time again, unable to make sense of all the secrets she now carries with her.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by Evie and her amazing art that really gave me the push to keep writing! Also nerds and dorks who shall remain nameless to preserve their dignity. Ilyallbye.

There are promises she has to keep. Emma had promised to keep looking for a land without magic when she was gone and the words wrap themselves around her as she is dragged away from palace gardens of the past back to the abandoned castle. She lands her fists, the splinters cut into her skin. It’s here that Emma remembers what she had promised her mother before leaving her palace. It’s here with splinters in her knuckles that she thinks of a  plan, one to keep all her promises. Being brought back by magic is different when there is purpose involved, she finds.

 

Mulan bandages her hands and presses no more beyond a look. Watching specks blood staining the thin cotton Emma remembers how easily Regina’s fingertips had closed her wounds and she feels determination coursing through her body.  Maybe for the first time in her life. It’s a new feeling, to try and look forward with a place in mind.

 

Her mother receives her with a hug and a kiss to her cheek. Emma melts into it so easily, a few days had been a whole season for her. It’s not difficult to forget about Princess Snow and Regina’s tired sighs in those seconds. To just feel the scent of roses on her mother’s skin and remember Autumn nights where she had tucked her in. But when she breaks from her embrace she recognizes the expectant look in her eye. It’s news she wants from her, something to have changed during her time away. Her mother will never say it aloud, she will never need to.

 

“Mom, I’ve been thinking about what we talked about.” Emma begins and her mother smiles. She feels her inside beginning to twist themselves like they always do.

 

“Yes, sweetheart?” She takes her arm and leads her to walk down the path where Regina’s knees had weakened for the first time.

 

“I,” The words suddenly stick in her throat with the memory of dark eyes digging into her. Still not believing that she was real.“I’d...I’d like to visit other kingdoms.”   

 

“Oh?”

 

“I’d be good for me. For the Kingdom, I mean. To cement my role as Princess.” She fidgets not used to a lie of this caliber. “Uh, what do you think?”

 

“I think it’s wonderful, Emma.” Her mother squeezes  her arm in approval and her face lights up. Despite everything, she still feels a familiar warmth bubbling inside her. “Do you have a place in mind already?”

 

“Yea..yes.” Her eyes focus on the flowing water of the garden fountains. It had occurred to her  late one night with Regina fast asleep on her shoulder. “Aarhus.”

 

“King Eric’s Kingdom? Though that sweet boy will always be Prince Eric to me.” Her mother is delighted. “We should begin preparations straight away! Oh you won’t want to miss the Night Lights Festival! It’s wonderful, the ships light up their lanterns and the sky is just glowing green.”

 

For once, perhaps. Emma doesn’t mind how her mother gets carried away.

 

* * *

 

“Why Aarhus, Alteza?” Henry had asked  with his finger on a yellowed map. The lines on it had been different than the ones in her mother’s Council Room now. “If it is the Sea you wanted there are much nicer shores than that. I can assure you.”

 

Emma had considered her answer carefully, wondering how much of the truth she could spare. “It’s at the end of the World, isn’t it?”

 

“I suppose it is at the end of the map, yes.” Henry had laughed, there had been a sort of quiet amusement in it. “Is there something you are searching?”

 

“Maybe.” Emma had replied letting the smell of his coffee and parchment comfort her. She hadn’t known if there’d been a reason to come at all. Maybe she had just wanted to say goodbye.

 

“Parece que es importante.” He’d looked at her like he had forgotten himself. Emma hadn’t known how to reply except with a nod. “Well then. I hope you find it.” Henry had said silently composing himself.

 

Emma had smiled weakly and squeezed his hand. “I’ll bring you back a seashell.”

 

“Leave them where you find them, Alteza. It is bad luck to take them away from their home.”  He’d laughed again. “They really do not teach much in this kingdom.”

 

“Good thing I have you.” She’d said as she neared the door. Emma hadn’t been able to bear looking back at him.

 

Sitting in her carriage she wishes she had. Not that she understands the feeling, beyond a strange sort of regret. Maybe it’s because no one in the palace had asked how the Princess might had bloodied her knuckles, how she might have split her nails. Or why her reflection looked different than it did before. No one but Henry had looked at her like something had changed. Maybe she felt she owed him something more than she gave him.

 

“How much longer until the Palace?” She asks Mulan wanting to think of something else.

 

“About a half day, I think.” Mulan shifts her in seat. “You’re getting restless too, aren’t you?.”

 

“It’s been almost five days.” Emma lets herself complain as she pulls at the red dress chosen for her. “This is insane.”

 

“Also your idea.” She gives her a look that is meant to be the final word.

 

“Isn’t this what princesses are supposed to do anyway?”

 

“Inconvenience the royal guard on a whim? I think so, yes.”

 

“I resent that!” Emma punches her arm. “I actually planned this.”

 

“I believe you.” Mulan rolls her eyes and smiles just enough to put the topic to rest.

 

Emma sighs taking her words for more than her friend had meant them. Watching the forest grow thicker and darker as they go deeper into the heart of Aarhus she remembers Regina. Her words late one night, _a travelling queen would raise more eyebrows than a lazy one_. It strikes her now that she had been right, when even Mulan finds this trip odd. And she is just the Princess.  Something catches in her throat as she wonders how Regina had learned those lessons. If they had been all whispers and looks in the castle.If had been the way maids and servers grew quiet and avoided her gaze. The looks they did spare her. If she had just taught herself to catch those moments as they happened. To anticipate them in a way she never has.

 

_“Pretend you didn’t hear it.” Regina had held her by the wrist as ladies of the court passed them one evening after dusk. There had been a hiss and a laugh behind a fan and Emma had been ready to go after them. “It infuriates them. It reminds them of how small they really are.”_

 

_“That’s a lie.” She’d told her still reeling.  “And you know it.”_

 

_“It doesn’t matter if it is.” There’d been a flash of something in her eyes. Anger, barely tempered. “Come.”_

 

There is still need gnawing away at her, to fix things. To pay for something she doesn’t really understand. It’d been there when Henry had offered his handkerchief to dry her tears, it’d been there when Regina had been sobbing in her arms after a play. Emma has to believe that all it takes to change things is trying. That travelling to the end of the World will keep the anger away from Regina’s eyes, keep her from lying to herself. Stop whatever is supposed to come. Whatever already did.

* * *

 

Emma had imagined that the End of the World would look different than this. She had never pictured it exactly, never bothered to think of the colors. But she thought it would be something else than the bright reds and greens. The cobblestone that looks too much like the streets outside of her mother’s palace. Something other roses and violets hanging from windows. Hearing the click of the horses’ hooves she wonders if there could be any sort of answer here. The cold is her only reminder of how far they have travelled, it makes her hands itch. Emma brings them up to her mouth to keep them warm and she loses her breath entirely when she lays eyes on what she knows is the royal castle of Aarhus.

 

This castle could be spotted from the Sea, Emma thinks. That is its entire point, carved out of red stone. The turrets all differ in height and the roof is tiled with seven different colors. A red and white flag is caught in the Sea wind. A crowned lion is stitched onto it, a lesson she had revisited once she had made up her mind.She feels cold sweat pooling at her back, she wishes she were Emma Swan and not Princess Emma. Emma Swan who had started out as a stable girl and been her Queen’s maiden, who had calloused hands and was good with a shovel. Burying her nails into her palms Emma reminds herself that it’s the Princess who they expect, the Princess who could get answers. It’s the Princess who Emma Swan needs today.

 

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Mulan asks tilting her head up to look at the towering form of it.

 

“No.”

 

“Good. I’d be worried if you were.” Mulan squeezes her shoulder as the palace becomes a block of red in front of them.

 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Hua.” Emma shakes her head feeling a little lighter.

 

The Aarhus royal guard open the gates for them with such precision that they look like figurines in a clock. Dressed in yellows and blues and feathered hats. Trumpets announce their arrival as the carriage crosses onto the courtyard. Emma sees the two straight lines of nobles and palace staff waiting to receive her, sees the spears and swords on the guards. Remembers what is what was like to have elbowed her way to the front of one those lines, for a chance to see Regina. She’d smiled then, with her heart in her throat.  But it’s nothing like that now, not when her dress had been buttoned by maids and there isn’t a speck of dirt to the shoes hidden under her skirts. The carriage door is opened and there is a hand extended to her.

 

“Her Royal Highness, Princess Emma of White!” It’s a strange thing to hear it announced like that. “May Aarhus show her the welcome that is worthy of her!”  

 

The people curtsy, with hats in their hands and skirts in their grasp. They all whispered the same words of welcome and maybe, Emma thinks, her knees would buckle too had brown eyes had been looking back at her. But there is only the occasional flash of green and blue. Demure but unafraid smiles.

 

“Welcome, welcome Your Royal Highness!” A short man announces as they near the palace doors. “I am Sebastian, Royal Emissary. I am afraid King Eric’s council meeting has extended for longer than he intended but I am ecstatic to be your guide!”

 

Emma smiles as she picks her words. “And I will be delighted to be in your company, sir.” If she were able to look back she is sure she could spot Mulan sighing in disbelief.

 

“Excellent! Your Highness is fairer than the reports say, if I may so.” His blonde hair is neatly combed to a side and his moustache oiled in a style that is not familiar to her. It makes his teeth look bigger as he smiles.

 

She blinks in surprise because it’s the first time she has ever thought of herself as her mother’s daughter. “I thank you, sir.”

 

Sebastian keeps speaking, Emma is sure but she cannot keep track of his words as her eyes wander. Wander into every nook, every  pillar. The polished floors. There is much gold as there is in her mother’s palace but it has been crafted into different details. Delicate linings on the walls, in the eyes of portraits. The sky in a scene painted on the ceiling above her. A King with a trident in his hand, shining victorious as the Sun hits it. Aarhus does not need plays to tell its stories, not when the King walks under this every day. She doesn’t know what is it that she feels, catching her dress reflected in gold leaf. A sort of sickness, maybe. Her guide opens a balcony and she is too glad to be able to step out of the halls.

 

“Here it is the pride of Aarhus, the Sea.” He gestures to the blue with arms wide open, Emma is supposed to be awestruck. She can only be relieved to be breathing the cold salt of the air. “The common folk would believe the castle to be vulnerable but I would ask them who would dare confront us? Who could come from the End of the World, Your Highness.”

 

“Who indeed, sir.” Emma echoes feeling as if she were becoming rust listening to him speak.

 

He clears his throat discretely and clicks the heels of shoes together. An old habit perhaps because he smiles just the same. As if his job is well done. “There are of course much more Aarhus has to offer but what kind of hosts would we be if we exhausted Your Royal Highness of them?”

 

She thinks of that girl in her reflection in the Queen's castle, with flowers braided in her hair. 'I wouldn't dare question the quality of your hospitality, sir.”

 

Sebastian laughs, clearly taken with the Princess. “You will be joining the King for dinner. In the meantime, Your Highness can rest in the chambers to your left. The Queen chose them herself.” He points to a large door opposite to the balcony.

 

“The Queen?” She asks with her pulse quickening on instinct. Ready to cling onto any shadow of Regina.

 

“Yes, Her Majesty took great pleasure in it.’ His voice has suddenly lost its excitement. It's sad, almost. “Chose them for the view, I believe. Anyway, I should be getting along and letting you rest, Your Highness.”

 

And with a bow he is gone.

 

* * *

 

Her skin is newly powdered and her hair freshly oiled. Her red dress had been exchanged for a blue one. It doesn't suit her, Emma thinks. It wouldn't suit Emma Swan, not in the stables. Not in the chambers of the Queen, not in Regina's bed. But, it's part of her promise. Part of who she had promised her mother she would be.

 

“Your Highness, don't you look lovely!” Sebastian exclaims as he receives her. “Your maids were able to style your hair in our tradition! My, you could be _our_ Princess!”

 

Emma pats the thick braids that hold her hair together, that go around her head. Not a strand out of place. Her neck is heavy with the weight of them.

 

“That is kind of you to say.”

 

Sebastian offers his arms as they walk down the halls. He seems as old as Henry, though his wrinkles are deeper. And the way his lips part is not the same, they are meant to coax smiles out of her. Not to reflect them.

 

“We have prepared a feast for tonight! The best of the best, of course! I hope Your Highness has brought her appetite!”

 

The guards stationed at the doors move to open them as if they had heard a command. Still like figurines in a clock. It's hundreds of lit candle lights that wait for her, the room is gold and blue from the colors of the evening. The table is made from one single piece of dark wood and the room smells of fish. It takes strength to keep her appetite.

 

“Princess Emma!” Calls who Emma assumes is King Eric as he leaves his chair to greet her. “My, you've grown since I last saw you!”

 

“I wasn't aware we had met, Your Majesty.” She replies taking in the sharpness of his blue eyes. Maybe, if she makes an effort, she can think of his dark hair and clean shaven face as familiar. But he looks like too many others that she cannot be sure the memory is real.

 

“We have! But you were barely out of diapers and I was getting acquainted with the sword at the time.” He laughs earnestly. King Eric could be confused for her brother, the way he speaks to her.

 

“It’d be concerning if I hadn't outgrown my diapers, Your Majesty.”

 

“Ha! Better than your mother described in her letter!” He grins widely at her but Emma can't bring herself to return it. “Come, come we can carry on while we eat. I doubt the honey and berries in your chambers were enough for you.”

 

As they near the table Emma sees a woman get to her feet. She is dressed in a deep blue and her dark hair is braided with jewels. Her figure is thin, thinner than it’s meant to be. Her skin picks up the colour of the fire but Emma can tell it misses the Sun. Like it’s meant to catch it but has lost all its glow. Her chest shrinks at the thought.

 

“Princess, this is my wife. Ariel.” King Eric says.

 

Ariel, _the Queen,_ nods at her. Green eyes that inspect her, search her expression for something. Sympathy, maybe. Forgetting etiquette and royal titles she stretches her hand to her. The Queen blinks in surprise at the gesture. With apprehension she returns it, her skin is soft and her grip loose on Emma’s hand. The Queen is quick to withdraw it under the King’s eye.

 

“Forgive my wife, Princess.” He says with a hand under her chin, with all the appearance of gentleness. “She is not able to speak though she understands just fine.”

 

Ariel smiles an apology to Emma, as if she is trying to justify her absences today.

 

“Enough introductions, let us eat!” King Eric calls out as silver carts roll in with wines and brandies. “Sit, sit.”

 

White wine is poured into her goblet and platters are uncovered to reveal salted greens. No sooner have they made Emma’s lips stung when another course is served. Soup that gives her insides some comfort from the cold but her spoon barely touches the table when it’s taken away. It is not like her mother’s dinners, where they linger on her words and servers spoon seconds onto the plate of anyone who requests it. There are barely words exchanged and everyone seems to eat because they must. She isn't surprised to find that Sebastian's words had been an exaggeration. A third course is brought, unveiled to be blue shell crab, lobster and a fish whose eye seems to be watching her.

 

“All of the royal favorites in one.” King Eric lifts up his goblet. “I am sure you will love it as your mother does.”

 

Emma mirrors him and sees that the Queen has already set hers down. She recognizes that expression on her face, that look of not being here all together. Emma had spied it on many afternoon teas of Regina’s, on moments with her mother she had all but escaped from. While the King cracks shells and expertly avoids the bones of his fish Ariel stares at her plate, at the dead look of it. Untouched by her fork and knife. This goes unquestioned and Emma wonders if there is a girl worried about Her Majesty not eating. If there is a maid who might care.

 

_“Did you steal all this from the kitchens?!” Regina had asked her as she came in to find a spread in her chambers._

 

_“I didn't steal anything..I just. Took it.” She’d raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “In the name of the Queen?”_

 

_“So you stole it.” She had answered with grape in her mouth, clearly amused at the thought. “I'm hardly surprised.”_

 

_“I had a list from Ruth!” Emma had protested but couldn't keep from laughing._

 

_“A whole parchment it seems.” Regina had examined her offerings. Cheese. Bread and roasted vegetables. Fruits and desserts that wouldn't be too missed. She’d beamed at her then, taking the jug of fresh water she'd placed on the table. She’d poured the water over hands and onto a basin. “Thank you.”_

 

_“I’m happy to do it.”_

 

Seeing the unexpectant and resigned look on Ariel’s face Emma knows there is no girl. No girl to thank for her love.

 

After dinner Emma is taken through the rest of the castle’s halls and corridors. The silver of the moon makes the red and gold stand out, and it has to be witnessed by the Princess. She is sure that one of her practiced smiles must have turned into a cringe by now. She steals glances at Queen Ariel whose steps don't make a sound on carpet or stone. Who seems to hide the slightest winces of pain.

 

“I’m sure you've seen a version of this already.” King Eric points to a place above them. “But I much prefer this one.”

 

Emma stretches her neck and sees the King again with a trident in his hand. Below him lies the body of a creature grey of skin, half man, half fish. The silver in the waves breaks triumphantly over the King, almost forming a halo around his head.

 

“Your ancestor, Your Majesty?” Emma asks with a much subtlety as she can.

 

“The First King Eric.” He says as if he had turned back into a boy who believes every word of his tale. “After the Sea King was slayed our Kingdom was proudly able to grow into what you see now.”

 

She nods knowing that her attention doesn't quite make a difference. She shifts it to the Queen, who is intent on looking at a frame at the far end of the room. She looks at it like she wants to block out her husband's words. Emma joins her and discovers the portrait of young woman. The same blue eyes as the King's but their sharpness is different. More determined.

 

“Who is that?” Emma asks before she is aware of it.

 

Queen Ariel turns to look at her and her mouth opens. As if she too has forgotten that words will not follow. Maybe that is what happens when someone is not spoken to.

 

“Forgive me, Your Majesty. I...I forgot.” Emma stutters as her neck grows hot with shame. “I’m really very…”

 

Ariel shakes her head and takes her hand. She opens it until it’s flat on hers. Emma feels her tracing something onto her palm. It's not until her third attempt that she understands. **D-O-N-T** , she spells on her skin.

 

“Don’t?” She whispers.

 

“That is my sister. Princess Mathilde.” King Eric is sudden in his interruption. He puts a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “I have her to thank her for my marriage, actually.”

 

“Oh? That sounds like an interesting story.” Emma manages to keep her teeth from grinding.

 

“I'm surprised it has not reached the Kingdom of White.”

 

“I'm sure it has but Your Majesty will find that my memory is not the best.” She puts a hand to her mouth to fake modesty.

 

He laughs, thinking her the Princess she claims to be. “Mathilde had taken ill and our healers recommended a warmer climate for her. She and I were sent to foreign shores while I was still a Prince. As luck would have it, the waves threaten to take us the day my sister was well enough for a swim.”

 

The King sighs contently. Emma takes that as a cue. “What happened then?”

 

“We were rescued by a girl from a convent.”  He nods towards Ariel. “Pulled us out of the water with divine strength. I took that as a sign to make her my wife.”

 

Ariel holds her breath as his hands slips away from her. “I have to leave you now, I'm afraid. The council only resolved for a break because I ordered we had dinner. Duty is duty. Ariel. Your Highness” He tells them before getting lost in the long corridor.

 

Emma walks closer to Mathilde's portrait and looks back at the Queen.

 

“You are not a girl from a convent, are you?”

 

Her eyes light up and Emma knows that is what it’s like to be seen. Truly seen.  Ariel shakes her head as steps forward to stand next to her.

 

“Where is Mathilde?” She lowers her voice because it's a secret she is asking for. She opens her hand for the Queen’s answer.

 

“ **G-O-N-E. A-W-A-Y.”**

 

\---

 

There is an act that became necessary for this trip. Emma avoids every mirror, every shining armor because of it. She stopped her replies to King Eric and began remarking on the decor of the room, on the scent of violets. Speaking of roses and complimenting on the fabric of the Queen’s dresses. Eventually the King became uninterested in her beyond promises to send many sealed letters and plans back to her mother. He doesn’t trouble himself about the Princess anymore, does not much care what it is that she does with her days. It’s the company of the Queen she needs, she can feel it.  Emma knows her time is running out here, she has just two days until the Night Lights Festival. Today she ventures into town with the Queen and Mulan. Escorted by three soldiers of the Royal Guard.

 

“Your Highness, what do you have planned for today?” Mulan says in the deep voice she reserves for others.

 

“I believe that is up to the Queen to decide. Isn’t that right, Your Majesty?” Ariel nods and her grin is grateful. Emma stretches her palm so that she may etch out their destination. **L-A-G-O-O-N.** “The Queen says it’s the lagoon for us!”

 

“May I have a word with Your Highness? About security protocols?” It takes all her self control to keep from laughing in her face over such a weak excuse.

 

“Of course, Hua. Excuse us, Your Majesty.” She curtsies and leads Mulan into a street corner where they can’t be heard.

 

“Can you please explain just what is happening right now?” Mulan hisses under her breath. “What on Earth are you trying to accomplish out here?”

 

Emma thinks of answers at the End of the World, of Regina. Of the promise to look while she was gone and away from her. All the things she cannot say. “Bond with the Queen of Aarhus? Like a Princess would?"

 

“Emma, nothing about that makes any sense.” She hangs her head low. “And if I have to crack another shell to get to my dinner, I swear. Can you at least tell me you know what you’re doing?”

 

“I think I am.” She looks back at eh Ariel standing in between her soldiers. “I just need today to figure it out. Please”

 

Mulan breathes out and says no more. Emma stops herself from squeezing her shoulder before rejoining the party. She can feel Mulan watching her, for any sign of the truth. It’s a feeling that sticks to back of her mind on the way to the lagoon, as she rejects any help to climb onto a rowboat. Someday she will tell her, some day when things are different. Maybe they will be so different there will be nothing to tell. Emma rows them to the middle of it, where only the water against the oars and the insects can be heard. She smiles secretly, to herself. It wasn’t so long ago that she had dived into the water for another Queen.

 

_“Quit your splashing! You’re soaking my dress!” Regina had told her from the mock pier built at the edge of the pond. The one she had jumped off so many times as a child, the one where she had found initials she hadn’t belonged to anyone she knew then._

 

_“I wouldn’t be soaking your dress if you took it off and joined me.”_

 

_She had never seen Regina blush before that afternoon. Never seen her speechless._

 

_“No one will know. I promise.” Emma had sunken into the water to prove her point. “The nobles think a ghost walks past this pond. They don’t dare come near.”_

 

_Regina had burst out laughing. “Don’t tell me that stupid rumour is your doing?”_

 

_“I wouldn’t call it that.”_

 

_“All that effort to get me out of my dress? Well, it’d be a waste if I did not...appreciate it.”_

 

_She’d gone under the water of the pond she knew so well to hide the red of her cheeks._

 

Ariel taps on her fingers to call her attention and the points to her smile. Why, is what she means. Why is she smiling.

 

“Good memories, Your Majesty.”

 

She shakes her head in reply, like she has remembered something of her own. She points to herself and signals to a tiara above her head. Princess.

 

“You came here with Mathilde?” Emma asks hoping she had understood.

 

Ariel nods. She points to herself, to her eyes and then to Emma. It makes Emma think that she should have thought of given her way to better communicate with her but this will do. 

 

“You...see me?”

 

Her head tilts to the side. Kind of, it is supposed to mean. Ariel signals to her again and back to her chest.Raises two fingers linked together.

 

“We’re the same?” Ariel smiles her answer. “You think we’re looking for the same thing?”

 

She motions for Emma to carry on, to tell her the secret she had brought from so far away.

 

Emma sucks in a breath and lets go of the oars. The words needs to come out, this could be her only opportunity to get them out. “I’m looking for a land without magic. I thought...I thought that maybe it’s just crossing the End of the World.” She knows how it sounds, insane if not dumb. Something a child might believe in.

 

She watches Ariel rest her chin on her hand, lost in thought. It could be that she had misunderstood, that they don’t want the same thing. That aren’t as alike as they thought they were. The Queen reaches for her hand instead.

 

“ **T-H-I-N-K. I. K-N-O-W. P-E-R-S-O-N.”**

 

Emma closes her hand around hers in gratitude. “Could you take me to them?”

 

Ariel nods and draws her answer on her knuckles instead. “ **N-I-G-H-T. L-I-G-H-T-S.”**

 

* * *

A plan was made and that makes Emma’s blood run cold. Secret plans, secret plans with _Queens_ , don’t tend to go well. They are usually torn to shreds just like she is ripped away by magic but today she dares to look upon her reflection. Emma Swan, she thinks, as she fastens the silver knife to her thigh like Ariel had instructed. There is a slight furrow to her brow and her hands feel firm as they tie a knot. She has to remember that by the end of the night she must be Princess Emma again, if this is work. There can be no hint of determination in her eyes then. Her dress is white, to reflect the green of the Night Lights. She shakes her head. There is no escaping this sort of thing no matter the kingdom.

 

There is a knock on her door and Emma knows it’s time. Mulan and clock figurines guards have come to fetch her. Emma wishes she could tell her not to worry,whatever happens tonight. Instead she accepts her service bow and heads towards the water. It’s dark already and only a few torches light the way to the King’s ship. It’s the color of honey and golden letters spell out _The Conqueror_ at its back. Its three sails are the reds and blues of King Eric’s royal house. A sign to the people, her mother would call it. That their King is out here celebrating with them.

 

“Oh, Your Highness! Tonight is such a joyous occasion for us and yet it is a reminder that you are soon to leave us! Bittersweet, I call it!” Sebastian appears to lead her aboard.

 

“Sir, you must only think of tonight.” She tells him knowing the words are inadequate. “The blessing that it is.”

 

The nobility is gathered here, on the freshly scrubbed deck. Drinks in their hands and powdered cheeks. Lips painted red and heeled shoes showing the colors of their families. There are eyes on her, on the bareness of her lips and the heels they cannot see. She is just the Princess, how does one person survive such eyes for so long? A gaze that doesn’t become a glower because manners and titles hold it back.

 

“It’s a fine night, Princess Emma.” King Eric welcomes her by placing champagne in her hand. “Isn’t it?”

 

“As fine as I could have asked for, Your Majesty.” Emma thinks of what the Princess might say, the Princess he has thought her to be. “You must come for our Summer celebrations next year. I am sure the palace sorely misses you.”

 

“Ah, I finally know why you have come all this way.”

 

“Oh?” She says fearing discovery. “Why..why do you think?”

 

“Your mother sent you to lure me back for a visit!”

 

Emma tries to hide her relief by taking a sip of her champagne. “Was I so obvious?”

 

“You gave it your best, Princess.” He winks and she cannot help but see how he could have been a brother again. A brother who never saw past what she said.

 

The ship begins to move and the King keeps her steady. “Let’s hope you have your sea legs with you.”

 

Emma laughs and allows herself to drift away from him. Find the closest place to the mast where she will be able to watch for Ariel. She should be more impressed by the way she waves break so quietly against the ship, how the sails blow up with the wind. But she only thinks of the darkness of the water and what lies underneath. Violins and accordions begin playing and she lets her mind wander into a corner she reserves for wishes for the future. Where there could be dances in a distant land, on bare feet. Where Regina is holding her skirts in one hand and rubbing circles onto the back of her neck with the other. Her own hair would be loose on her shoulders and maybe her cheeks would be burned red. But it won’t matter. She’s prodded out of her corner by the flame being ignited inside the lanterns. One by one they are released and Emma watches them being pushed up to the sky with a want in her chest.

 

There is a tap on her arm and she nearly yelps in surprise. Ariel is laughing at her, so clearly entertained.

 

“You try being snuck up on.” She protests embarrassed that she had been taken completely by surprise.

 

Ariel swaps her drink for another goblet and points to the sky. Almost time. Watch. So Emma does, waits for what she was told through tracings on her hands would come. The first lantern goes off in red and the next in blues and yellows. They pop until they are green lights, until the night sky is black. Then it comes, a green glow that takes up the entire sky. The Queen touches her elbow and Emma quickly unties the silver knife from her thigh. She pricks her finger for three drops of blood and lets them slide into the goblet Ariel had given her. She nods and urges Emma to drink. Sea water and blood, she could choke on the salt. Ariel raises her hand and counts to three and Emma jumps into the water. The sound of a single cannon disguises the sound of the breaking surface.

 

She thinks she’s drowning when she takes her first mouthful of water, when her dress is a weight on her. The water is colder than she expected, she understands why it is Aarhus considers itself guarded by it. No one would dare brave these waters for the castle. 

 

“My, my now _who_ do we have here?” A voice says below. “A lost Princess.”  Whatever it is circles her as she kicks to stay afloat. “Not so lost, perhaps. Drinking the sea with your blood to be like us for just a few minutes.”

 

“Can you help me?” Emma’s words become bubbles under the water. It’s green and black with the night, nothing like the blue she had seen off a balcony.

 

“It isn’t to grow a tail and chase your true love down a cove, is it?” She’s in front of her now. Grey eyes and purple skin. She is like the Sea King painted in the ceiling above King Eric’s crown.

 

Emma shakes her head.

 

“But it is to do with true love, isn’t it?” She scoffs and Emma fears she might be losing her interest. “That poor girl loses a hers to marriage and sets out to fix everyone else. Typical of the heart of a mermaid. If she would just learn to be patient and pay a seer once in a while.”

 

“Mermaid?!” More bubbles erupt thinking of the Queen who is determined to not listen to her husband speak. Of a tail she must have sacrificed, of Mathilde who she lost anyway.

 

“Enough. If you don’t get the words out you’ll drown, Princess”

 

“A land without magic. Do you know how to get here?”

 

She cackles as if it were the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard.

 

“You thought you would come where the land ends to find the end of magic. Child, the Sea is no different. At least none of the Seas I’ve roamed.”

 

The disappointment alone could sink her to the bottom and trap her there among the rocks. 

 

“What can I do? What should I-”

 

“I’m only a sea witch, I don’t claim to be all knowing. Burn down Kingdoms if you have to. The Dark One does not hand out tasks with no solution.” The sea witch comes closer to her and grabs her by the sleeves. “Be careful, child. The traces of his magic, of yours and hers, are in your blood. Be mindful of who picks that up.”

 

The sea witch pushes her upward before she can grow concerned over her warning. The night’s air is filling her lungs again and makes her coughs what remains of the blood and salt. 

 

“There she is, I see her!” Emma hears Mulan shouting from a rowboat in the distance. “I see the Princess!” She signals weakly to them, with all the frailty of a Princess who had fallen into the water and is lucky to have survived.

 

As the boat gets closer Emma takes a deep a breath and thinks of the vines of the abandoned castle. Of the way back to Regina and the news from the End of the World she will take with her.  

 


End file.
